An Orange County Superior Court judge on Tuesday denied a voter’s request to halt a controversial recall election against a Santa Ana city council member.
The integrity of the election on whether to oust Councilmember Jessie Lopez first came under legal scrutiny when Orange County Registrar Bob Page alerted the city in late October to what he said was an error in the district boundaries used to define the recall.
State law requires that, in the case of a local recall election, ballots go to voters within the district boundaries as they existed when the official was elected. Santa Ana, like many cities in California, went through redistricting after the 2020 Census and the boundaries of the city’s Ward 3, represented by Lopez, shifted while she was in office.
But the city used, and the registrar accepted, the district’s current boundaries and population size to determine the number of signatures needed to trigger an election and who should get to vote.
As a result, nearly 1,200 voters who should be able to vote in the Nov. 14 election did not get ballots, according to Page.
How the recall landed in court
One of those voters, Guadalupe Ocampo, filed a legal complaint last Friday alleging she was “deprived of her right to vote in the election.” Ocampo asked for an immediate injunction of the recall election.
But O.C. Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin denied the request Tuesday during a hearing in Santa Ana and scheduled another court date for January 2024.
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