The Lex Rex Institute has filed a complaint in Orange County Superior Court on behalf of three Orange County plaintiffs challenging the validity of California’s Voter’s Choice Act (VCA).
The VCA is an optional, or discretionary, provision of California’s Elections Code that expands voting procedures in any county where the Board of Supervisors, through an affirmative vote of the majority, elects to adopt and implement it. Orange County voted to opt-in to the VCA in February 2019 and implement it in 2020. Orange County was among the very first counties to do so. Fewer than half of California counties have opted-in to the VCA.
Among the VCA’s provisions is replacing local precinct-level polling places with “vote centers” throughout the county, whereby any voter may cast a ballot at any vote center regardless of proximity to their residence or traditional polling place. In order to implement county-wide access to any vote center, “poll books” must be accessible to all other voter centers — in live time — to ensure that a voter has not already cast a ballot at a different vote center. Poll books are the list of registered voters. The only way to affect this provision of the VCA is to have poll books accessible on the internet.
That is the problem.
Having poll books, a critical component of the voting system, accessible on the internet directly conflicts with a mandatory provision of California’s Elections Code that clearly and unambiguously states that “no part of the voting system shall be connected to the internet at any time.”
This is a straight statutory challenge. Centuries of American jurisprudence would dictate that when a mandatory provision and a discretionary provision of the law are in conflict, the mandatory provision controls.
“We are on very solid legal ground for this challenge,” said attorney Alexander H. Haberbush, president of the Lex Rex Institute. “We’re hitting the ground running and have been grateful for the plaintiffs and donors who are making this important complaint possible.”
Named defendants include Governor Gavin Newsom, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, each individual member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, and Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page. All defendants in the case have been served with notice of process. Read the complaint here.
- For additional information, contact Lex Rex attorney Deborah Pauly at (562) 435-9062.