Judicial Decisions - II (2004; 2006 Bilbray/Busby;
2006
County
sued over handling of primary:
www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/08/01/news/top_stories/5_02_497_31_06.txt
Lawsuit
asks court to order recount of Bilbray-Busby race
By:
DAVE
The
contest was held to pick a temporary replacement ---- through the remainder of
this year ---- for now-imprisoned Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the former
representative who pleaded guilty in late November to taking more than $2.4
million in bribes in exchange for steering tens of millions in government
contracts to local firms.
Bilbray
received nearly half the votes, while Busby garnered 45 percent. On June 13,
Bilbray was sworn into office as the new representative for the 50th
Congressional District.
Filed
on behalf of voters Barbara Gail Jacobson of San Diego and Lillian M. Ritt of Rancho Santa Fe, both of
whom live in the district, the lawsuit maintains that the results cannot be
trusted because poll workers took voting machines home with them before
election day in violation of state guidelines.
Court
told votes don't have to be counted, certified
Miriam
Raftery
Published:
Monday August 28, 2006
www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Hearing_in_California_on_whether_Congress_0828.html
Superior
Court Judge Yuri Hofmann heard arguments Friday on a motion to dismiss the
election challenge lawsuit filed by voters seeking a full hand recount in
Paul
Lehto, a nationally
prominent election law attorney representing two voters who filed the suit,
called the motion an “invitation to the Court to ratify a seizure of power”
that amounts to “invading the sovereignty of a state.”
North
County Times, Judge throws out 50th District election lawsuit
www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/08/30/news/top_stories/7_05_458_29_06.txt
By: WILLIAM FINN BENNETT - Staff Writer
Just
a few days after the election, the
Hastert
then swore in Bilbray as the new congressman, despite the fact that the
election results had yet to be certified.
During
the brief hearing, Judge (Yuri)
Hofmann said the matter is one the U.S. House, not the state,
must now address.
Editors Note: Judge Hoffman cited Article 1,
Section 5 [1] of the
Appeal
Filed in Bilbray Election Challenge
Election
Nullification American Style: Speaker Hastert’s Swearing In At Issue
http://electiondefensealliance.org/2006/10/appeal_filed_in_bilbray_election_challenge
by Michael Collins, Special for
“Scoop” Independent News
Attorneys
Paul Lehto and Kenneth
Simpkins just entered an appeal to a California Superior Court decision that
prematurely ended an election contest in
At
the time of Hastert’s induction there were charges of major election problems
and questions raised about the security of voting equipment. In addition, the
election had not yet been “certified” by the Registrar of San Diego County.
Certification did not take place until the end of June. Hastert claimed, via
Bilbray's legal filings, that Bilbray was the rightful winner of the
close election and that state
courts had no power whatsoever to even look into the matter.
Citizens
Barbara Gail Jacobson and Lillian Ritt
sued now Congressman Brian P. Bilbray and San Diego Registrar Mikel Haas to achieve a recount
and close examination of the election. The case centered on secret vote
counting by the Registrar, the dispersal of voting machines to the homes of
poll workers well in advance of the election (and without supervision), and
irregularities like failure to allocate 50% of the ballots cast to appropriate
precincts. Key Constitutional issues were raised concerning the right of states
and localities to conduct and judge elections. The letter that the Speaker
apparently relied on indicated that there were 68,500 uncounted ballots, and
that certification would have to be transmitted later "as required by
law."
Judge
Yuri Hoffman dismissed the case after hearing several days of evidence and
argument. He cited the ultimate authority the U.S. House of Representatives to
rule on the selection of its own members. Thus, Hoffman reasoned, when Speaker
Hastert swore in Bilbray just seven days after the election amidst intense
controversy, that induction ended any further appeal of the election outcome by
state and local officials. Attorney Lehto
was quick to note at the time, “The election nullification is out in the open,
it is intentional, it is signed by their lawyers, and it can't be denied.” One
activist pondered, “What if they’d found pictures of election workers stuffing
the ballot boxes or manually changing totals after Hastert’s little ceremony?”
Election
law attorney Paul R. Lehto
commented:
This
concerns the constitutionality of House Speaker Dennis Hastert's action to
swear in Republican Brian Bilbray to Congress only 7 days after the election. A
minimum of 12,500 ballots were still uncounted, the race was reported as only
approximately 4,000 votes apart, and certification would not take place for
more than two weeks. Despite these facts, the defendants argued that this
premature swearing in deprived the state courts and everyone else of all power
or jurisdiction to look into the election, an "exclusive
jurisdiction" instead vesting in the House of Representatives alone.
The Next Katharine Harris?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_ezekiel_061013_the_next_katharine_h.htm
Give
Steny Hoyer some credit.
The Democratic Whip in the House is looking past any October surprise to the
post-election period when Republicans may employ a whole range of strategies to
hold on to their House majority regardless of the voters' verdict on November 8.
Hoyer
recently wrote a letter to Republican Vernon Ehlers, chairman of the usually
obscure House Administration Committee, voicing concerns about the possibility
of contested House elections:
At
least one Democrat has learned the lesson of Bush v. Gore: losing an election
doesn't stop this band of Republicans from trying to take the office anyway.
In
this case, it's not the Oval Office but the Speaker of the House that will be the
prize, and if Hoyer and the political pundits are right, whether the House is
controlled by Republicans or Democrats after January 3 is likely to turn on a
few House contests with close outcomes.
Here's
how it works. Each state is responsible for certifying the Congressional
winners to the U. S. House of Representatives. In many cases, the ultimate
state authority will be a Secretary of State, the office that Katharine Harris
held in
But
that's where the similarity to the 2000 Presidential election nightmare ends.
Article I of the U. S. Constitution provides that Congress itself--not the
federal courts--will have ultimate authority to determine who is qualified to
sit as a Representative. Dozens of House elections have been contested through
the past two centuries, and in each case, it was the House itself that decided
the outcome, sometimes reversing the decision of state authorities as happened
in 1985 when Democrat Frank McCloskey was awarded the
Editors Note: Problems in the August 16 primary prompted Republican congressional primary loser, Sharron Angle, to challenge the election. In the primary against Republican Chuck Heller (currenently the NV SOS) for the 2nd Congressional seat being vacated by Jim Gibbons, Angle lost by less than 430 votes, and sought a new election through the courts. The courts dismissed her suit citing lack of jurisdiction. Angle did not further pursue a challenge to the election
www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2006/aug/29/082910245.html
August 29, 2006
By SANDRA CHEREB
ASSOCIATED PRESS
RENO, Nev. (AP) - Assemblywoman Sharron Angle went to court Tuesday seeking a new Republican primary election, bucking pressure from a pair of high-ranking GOP leaders to end her contest against Dean Heller for Nevada's 2nd District congressional seat.
Angle lost to Heller by 421 votes in the Aug. 15 primary.
Though the Angle camp initially said the challenge would be
filed in
The "statement of contest" names Heller -
currently
Most involve Election Day polling problems in the
Washoe County Voter Registrar has said about 100 workers were late or didn't show up that day, causing some voters to leave without casting a ballot.
Angle and attorney Jonathan Hansen said also they've
received allegations of voting improprieties in
The filing further asserts that absentee ballots were mailed late, and people who then tried to vote in person were turned away. It also alleges some Republicans were given Democratic ballots and voted in the wrong primary.
"The alleged grounds for this challenge show that numerous voters have been disenfranchised by acts of malfeasance," the legal filing said. "The exact number of voters that were disenfranchised cannot be known."
The sprawling 2nd Congressional District covers portions of
all 17
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20060902/ELECTIONS/109020079
Geoff dornan
Appeal Capitol Bureau, gdornan@nevadaappeal.com
September 2, 2006
Sharron Angle on Friday lost her
call for a new election. Immediately after the ruling, she said there will be
no appeal and she will endorse and work for Dean Heller in his race for
After a day-long hearing into allegations of malfeasance by Washoe Voter Registrar Dan Burk and his staff, Carson District Judge Bill Maddox ruled not only do the U.S. Constitution and Nevada law bar him from deciding a challenge of any race for the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives but that Angle's lawyer Joel Hansen failed to prove the errors in Washoe County were numerous and serious enough to warrant nullifying the vote.
He also ordered Angle's side to pay Heller's legal costs in defending the case.
Citing Article 1, Section 5 of the
All three of those state that only the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives can decide contested elections involving their membership.
Maddox heard testimony in the case primarily to put all Angle's claims in the record but said even if he had jurisdiction over the issue, they failed to prove those allegations.
Malfeasance, he said "is a wrongful or unlawful act according to Black's Law Dictionary. It is not an omission of an act. It is the commission of an act."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20060905/pl_cq_politics/hellerswininnevada2gopprimarybecomesofficial
Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller is now the official winner of the tightly contested Aug. 15 Republican primary for his state’s open2nd Congressional District seat — following a court ruling Friday that rejected an attempt by his closest competitor,state Assemblywoman Sen. Sharron Angle, to have the outcome of the primary vacated and a new election called.
Angle conceded the contest after the court ruling and endorsed Heller for what appears a competitive contest with Democratic nominee Jill Derby, a state university regent, for the seat that five-term Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons left open to run for governor.
Because of the district court ruling and Angle’s decision not to appeal it, Heller’s victory stands, by a razor-thin margin of 428 votes. A total of about 69,000 votes were cast in the five-candidate Republican contest, in which former state Rep. Dawn Gibbons — the congressman’s wife - ran third.
In her petition to the court and at the hearing Friday,
Angle argued that poll workers disenfranchised voters by failing to open
polling stations on time, among other problems, in Washoe County, part of which
Angle represented in the state Assembly for four terms. The county, which
includes
While calling for a recount is the most common request in cases in which ballot irregularities are alleged, Angle went further, requesting that the Aug. 15 results be thrown out and the primary held over again.
But District Judge Bill Maddox rejected Angle’s request on
grounds that the state court lacks jurisdiction in congressional elections, the
Associated Press reported. According to Maddox, only the
OPINION
Vote Trust
www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1750<emid=113
…The judge threw out the case, not on a finding that the
practices were not illegal but on a constitutional basis. The judge found that
he had no jurisdiction, in part, according to Article 1, Section 5 of the
The pertinent part of Article 1, Section 5 says: "Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members,........". Note the phrase "of its own members".
…in
Could these court rulings simply be to set precedents? Could
it be the move of the GOP using activist judges who are clearly legislating
from the bench in order to set a precedent to be used in November? Is this all
the portent of things to come in November where election challenges for the
House of Representatives will go to the courts and be decided based on
precedent rulings from