Lawyer Says SOAR Petitions Violated State Election Law

In a potential death blow to the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources campaign, a Ventura lawyer is asking the county and four cities to throw out the 70,000 signatures the group collected because its petitions violated state law.

The revelation Wednesday that the SOAR petitions break a specific elections code requirement came the same day county officials determined the group had gathered enough signatures to place its initiatives on the ballot in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley.

“To me, it’s a minor technicality, but it’s still something that could stop SOAR from going on the ballot,” said Thousand Oaks Councilwoman Linda Parks, who led efforts to gather the signatures in that city. “People want this on the ballot. A tremendous grass-roots effort should not be tossed aside due to a technicality. That would be a crime.”

At the heart of the controversy is the allegation by Ventura attorney Robert Chatenever that the SOAR signatures should all be ruled invalid because the petitions on which they were gathered contained a defect. The flaw, he said, was that instead of merely stating “place of residence” in the spot where voters are asked to write where they live, the SOAR petitions stated “Residence Address (as registered).”

Chatenever, who said he has been retained by a group of county voters, declined to discuss the matter Wednesday. But in letters to County Clerk Richard Dean and city clerks in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Santa Paula and Moorpark, he outlined his demands--and threatened to ask a judge to intervene if the signatures are not thrown out by Friday.

Asking residents to write their address “as registered” is no mere technicality, Chatenever wrote, because it effectively prevents election officials from performing a key aspect of their job: making sure the people who signed the petitions still live where they registered to vote.

He said the state Supreme Court already weighed in on the issue in a 1982 case, Assembly vs. Deukmejian. Although the court refused to throw out the signatures in question in that case, it specifically prohibited the phrase “as registered” from being used in future petitions for the same reasons cited by Chatenever.

“It is the duty of the election official to compare a signer’s current residence address on the petition with that individual’s address as registered to vote in the records maintained by the county clerk,” Chatenever wrote Tuesday in a letter to Simi Valley City Manager Mike Sedell.

“Without the petition signer’s current address on the petition, it is impossible for the election official to determine whether the signer was a qualified registered voter.”

But county elections chief Bruce Bradley sees the issue differently. He believes the violation is a technicality that most likely had little effect on the outcome--and he has refused to throw out the signatures, saying it is an issue for the courts to decide. The county is counting all the SOAR signatures.

“I’m no legal expert, but my feeling is that 99% of the people probably put down where they live anyway,” Bradley said. “It technically does not comply with the elections code. But I don’t know that it’s anything more than that. We’ll let the courts decide.”

Others are apparently following suit. Simi Valley officials have written a response to Chatenever stating they will follow the lead of county elections officials.

“They [county elections officials] are the experts on this,” Sedell said. “I would leave it to a judicial process to determine.”

SOAR is attempting to pass measures preventing the cities of Oxnard, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Santa Paula and Moorpark from expanding beyond a set of designated borders without approval from voters. The group is also hoping to pass a countywide initiative preventing development of farmland and open space outside city boundaries unless voters sign off on it first.

SOAR supporters submitted signatures June 1 to qualify the county, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and Santa Paula initiatives for the fall ballot. The Oxnard City Council has already agreed to place the measure on the ballot, and the Camarillo City Council has agreed to simply make SOAR into law if the group can gather enough signatures to make the ballot.

SOAR co-leader Steve Bennett played down the legal threat Wednesday, saying it was just the opening salvo in what he foresees as a barrage of attacks soon to be directed at the group.

“We think it’s a minor issue,” Bennett said. “I think the people who signed this should have it on the ballot.”

Even if a judge throws out the signatures, that may not signal the end of this year’s SOAR campaign.

Parks said she will ask the Thousand Oaks City Council to avoid a costly legal battle and place SOAR on the ballot, given the number of signatures volunteers collected. Of the more than 11,000 names gathered, more than 80% were deemed valid, according to Bradley’s calculations.

“The point is, this is what people want to see on the ballot,” Parks said. “I think even opponents would have to agree that it’s what people would want.”