Escondido Thwarts Annexation Foes : Won’t Reopen Protest Hearing Despite ‘Bloated’ Voting Roll Evidence

Rural Escondido residents seeking to halt a 731-acre annexation of their land to the city were thwarted by a City Council decision not to reopen a protest hearing despite evidence of a “bloated” voting roll.

The anti-annexation group, led by Lehner Valley resident Wanda Cavanaugh and attorney Roy Garrett, challenged two dozen of the area’s 200 or so registered voters, presenting evidence to the Escondido officials that 23 of those registered had moved and one had died.

The group had collected protest signatures, which fell slightly shy of 50% of the registered voters in the annexation area, and claimed that if the voter list had been properly purged by the Registrar of Voters, their protest petition would have been sufficient to force automatic cancellation of the annexation effort. A 50% protest automatically halts an annexation effort.

The group appeared in force at the Escondido council meeting Wednesday night to press their case for reopening the annexation protest hearing on the basis of the flawed voter rolls.

But City Atty. David Chapman advised the council members that they did not have the authority to take that action.

Garrett said Thursday that the group will meet within the next two weeks to determine what further action they will take.

“Our avenues are limited since the council declined to reopen the hearing,” Garrett said.

The annexation election, which had been scheduled for Feb. 2, was rescheduled for June 7 after City Clerk Jeanne Bunch explained that the state Elections Code required that the vote be held at a general election.

Letters of protest against the election have been filed, signed by 148 people out of a voter list of 198 registered voters in the annexation area. However, 56 protest signers were ruled ineligible, leaving a 46% protest--slightly below the 50% needed to cancel the annexation process.

Garrett said that the anti-annexation group has the alternative of challenging the annexation process in court before the June election or waiting until after the election and filing suit to invalidate the election results.

Keith Boyer, deputy registrar with the county Registrar of Voters office, conceded that the county’s voter rolls are flawed because of the methods used to verify the residence of voters.

Under state law, he said, the office must use a “negative purge” system in which cards are sent out annually to registered voters who did not vote in the last election.

Names are purged from the list only if the cards are returned to the registrar’s office indicating that the person no longer lives at his or her registration address.

“Considering that in California, 30% of the people move every year, there are bound to be a certain number of registered voters who no longer reside at their registered addresses,” Boyer said.

He told the Lehner Valley group that their evidence, which included post office change of address cards for a number of the voters they had challenged, could not be considered by the registrar’s office under state law.

“We’ve tried to have the law changed. An effort to change the system has been introduced (in the state Legislature) by the Secretary of State, but has failed,” Boyer told the protest group.

Garrett said that since the election was scheduled, the registration lists had been bloated further by a rash of new voter registrations, including Ed Malone, an annexation proponent who owns about 110 acres of land in the valley but resides in La Jolla.