Irvine Council Certifies Results of June Election

The Irvine City Council voted 4 to 0 on Tuesday night to certify the results of last month’s council race and ballot Measure D.

Tuesday’s vote paves the way for Councilman-elect Cameron Cosgrove, who received the third-highest number of votes in the June 7 election, to be sworn in with the new council July 20. He will replace Mayor Larry Agran, who last month became the city’s first popularly elected mayor.

Last night’s vote also sends Measure D, which would call for a November election to fill Agran’s seat, to state officials for certification. But because the measure has little chance of being validated by the state before July 15, city officials said it probably will not apply to last month’s election, and Cosgrove will probably be sworn in next week.

“I will undoubtedly be the next councilman,” Cosgrove said after the certification vote was taken Tuesday night. “I was elected, and I will be there on the 20th of July.”

A group of Irvine residents who have sought to prevent Cosgrove from taking office also wanted the election results certified.

Earlier Tuesday, Cosgrove’s opponents filed suit in Orange County Superior Court to have the election results certified immediately by the council and to prevent Cosgrove from taking office until the matter was settled in court.

However, Superior Court Commissioner Julian Cimbaluk denied both requests Tuesday afternoon, calling them premature.

The outcome of the June election has sparked a major political battle in Irvine, pitting Councilwoman Sally Anne Miller against both Agran and Cosgrove.

Miller and her supporters had hoped that the just-approved Measure D would take effect before Cosgrove could be sworn into office. They have collected about 4,100 signatures of residents to force a special election. That is 600 more signatures than required by Measure D. The new measure allows Irvine residents to call a special election to fill a vacant council seat by gathering signatures from 7% of the city’s registered voters.

“Irvine residents have exercised their democratic rights and expressed their desire for a special council election in November,” Irvine resident Cristina Bustos-Thomas told the council Tuesday night. She was one of the residents who filed suit to have the election results certified.

But Cosgrove’s attorney, Frank Lunding, told the council members Tuesday night that some petition collectors had committed electoral fraud and that he had referred the matter to the district attorney’s office for investigation.

Lunding said that some petition circulators misrepresented themselves when they were circulating special election petitions to collect signatures of registered voters. He also said the one page of the signatures should be discounted altogether because the signatures were not gathered by the man who claimed to have circulated that page.

Anne Boogroff of Irvine said that she circulated the petition page in question, despite George S. Selig having claimed to have done so.

Selig’s signature appears on a copy of the page provided to The Times on Tuesday. Selig signed the statement at the bottom, which read: “I circulated this section of the petition. . . . I personally observed each signer place thereon his/her signature.”

“If I had known that I should have signed it, I would have definitely have signed it,” Boogroff said Tuesday. “It was done innocently enough.”

Tuesday’s developments came one day after a partially completed recount of the last month’s race was called off. Cosgrove had requested the recount.

Lunding said Cosgrove later asked that it be halted “because he thought it was divisive for the community.”