Mission Viejo Council Sets Recall Election

Petitions seeking the recall of City Councilman Robert A. Curtis contain more than 750 duplicate signatures, a number city officials found startling but not enough to cancel plans for a special election, which the council approved Monday.

The council voted 3-0, with one abstention, to set the special election for Feb. 27. The ballot will include a proposal to require that all annexation measures involving more than 100 acres receive voter approval.

“I’m very startled by that, by the number of duplicates,” Mayor William S. Craycraft said after Monday’s vote. “If there’s been any illegality, I certainly hope it will be investigated.”

Recall leaders denied any wrongdoing and said the duplicates were accidental.

Craycraft was the lone council member to abstain from the special election vote. He said later that his abstention was “based on the fact that recall should be used only in a case of malfeasance of an officer, and I haven’t seen that here.”

Curtis, who was not present during Monday’s vote, has said he believes that the recall is an effort by local developers to punish him for his positions advocating slow growth for the city. Developers, most notably the Mission Viejo Co., are the largest contributors to the recall effort, which has raised more than $150,000 to unseat the councilman.

Out of 12,026 signatures turned in on the petitions, 776 were found to be duplicates, according to a certificate presented to the council on Monday by City Clerk Ivy J. Zobel. All told, 4,066 signatures were invalidated, leaving 7,960 valid signatures, 190 more than the 7,770 needed to force a special election.

The recall campaign has come under investigation before, and the Orange County district attorney’s office is reviewing petitions that were allegedly distributed by invalid circulators, people who were not legally registered to vote in Mission Viejo.

Zobel cautiously answered a series of questions from Craycraft during Monday’s afternoon council session. Craycraft repeatedly asked whether she had found evidence of forgery among the petitions.

“That wasn’t what I was checking,” Zobel answered.

“Are there any forgeries that you are aware of?” Craycraft asked again.

“None that I’m aware of,” she said.

In an interview, Zobel said she had seen some signatures that “did not match” voter registration forms but added that she had found no evidence of fraud.

Helen Monroe, chairwoman of the Coalition to Recall Councilman Curtis, said recall leaders discovered duplicate signatures as they reviewed the petitions before turning them in, but had left them because they wanted to turn in the raw petitions.

“We would not touch those signatures,” she said. “That would be tampering.”

Monroe could not explain the large number of duplicates but said she expected many people signing the petitions were approached more than once and agreed without thinking.

“This can happen,” she said. “As the people went door-to-door, they signed. And when they saw it at the supermarket, they signed again.”

City officials estimate that the election will cost about $40,000 and have budgeted $60,000.