A federal judge in Santa Ana Monday pushed to resolve a civil dispute between the U.S. Justice Department and the Orange County Registrar of Voters to avoid putting elected officials “in limbo” in upcoming elections.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter told the attorneys involved in the case he was concerned it would establish precedence, so that going through the usual motions might just slow the process unnecessarily. For instance, if the county won just on the legal question, it would just prompt the Justice Department to amend the complaint and the process would start all over again.
Carter said he could see the case going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Right now this case is moving slowly and I’d like to move it forward,” Carter said.
Carter told attorney Suzanne Shoai of the Orange County counsel’s office that if her side prevails on the legal question, “You get a temporary knockout blow,” but that Michael Gates, the deputy assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, will just amend the government’s lawsuit.
The issue is the county’s opposition to turning over personally identifying information of registered voters such as driver’s license and Social Security numbers so the federal government can determine how well the county is maintaining its voter rolls to prevent fraud such as non-citizens casting ballots.
Gates repeatedly referred to the recent case of a woman charged with registering her dog to vote in Orange County.
He argued that county officials don’t want to get to a motion on summary judgment because that would entail an exchange of evidence, or what’s known as discovery.
“They don’t want discovery,” Gates argued.
Gates argued that the county pointed to 13 voters who were identified as ineligible to vote, and that they were referred to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office for prosecution.
“If you’re doing proper maintenance the list doesn’t have just 13 people,” Gates argued. “We just need a small amount of discovery to prove it. … We would love to have discovery and would take it in chunks (to speed the process). But the point is they don’t want it to happen and it will show their list maintenance isn’t working.”
Shoai countered that Gates was “misrepresenting” the county’s voter approval maintenance protocol. She also noted that Justice Department officials were seeking data on a “specific subset” of voter registrants to determine their citizenship status.
Shoai said that purging the voter rolls of residents who have moved out of state or county and who have died is an “ongoing” effort and involves more than the 13 recently determined ineligible voters.
Hearings are scheduled for Jan. 6 and Jan. 26, with a trial date at the end of March if it gets that far.
Gates told reporters after the hearing that Justice Department officials are seeking the same data from the state as well as Los Angeles and San Diego counties, but no lawsuits have been filed so far in those cases.
When the Justice Department sued the office of Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page in June, Orange County Board of Supervisors Vice Chairwoman Katrina Foley said the registrar was complying with state law in not turning over some of the information and added the county has been doing its job to eliminate bogus voters.
“We’re complying with state law that says we are required to protect the privacy of what would be considered private information,” Foley told City News Service.
That would include Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers, Foley said.
“And in five years we have identified 17 ineligible voters — 16 of whom have self-reported,” Foley said.
Robert Soufar, a 76-year-old Canadian citizen who lives in Fullerton, pleaded guilty in November to voting in the 2016 election.
“All of these 17 individuals have been removed from the voter rolls,” Foley said. “There are 1.9 million registered voters and 17 people have been identified as ineligible. Our voting lists are scrubbed constantly for people who have moved or died. … This is a good example that the system worked.”
County Supervisor Don Wagner, however, said the county should just hand over whatever the federal officials want. Wagner has since announced he was running for secretary of state.
“I think we ought to give everything over to the Department of Justice like they request and we shouldn’t be trying to hide anything if we have nothing to hide,” Wagner told City News Service.
Any voter who objects can bring their own lawsuit, Wagner said.
“I want the cleanest rolls possible,” Wagner said.
Wagner said it doesn’t matter if state law prevents turning over some personal information.
“If the federal government has a right to it, state law doesn’t trump that,” Wagner said. “I know it is a small number, but that’s part of my problem. I don’t know if it’s the tip of the iceberg or we have the entire iceberg here. And I think the Justice Department wants to figure that out and we should help them figure it out and not stand in the way.”