By Jose Granda

Last month, the public witnessed an unusual court case. Yolo County Clerk Freddie Oakley, acting as a defendant, and former County Clerk Tony Bernhard, acting as a plaintiff, colluded to suppress altogether the ballot arguments against the process of the all-mailed-ballot election of Measure C. They lost their case in this regard.

Judge Samuel McAdam ruled: “(Jose) Granda is well within his right to challenge the mail-in procedure in the argument against (Measure C), attacking both the substance and the process of the parcel tax issue. In other words, the substance and the procedure of any election are inherently relevant to each other. The voters will decide whether his opinion and argument have any merit.”

Therefore, I present this case to you, the voters, so you make your own decision. Documents backing these points are found at www.noschoolboardtaxes.org.

The all-mailed ballot violates your right to a secret ballot. See California Constitution Article 2, Section VII. If you vote “absentee,” you choose to waive that right. Here, that decision is imposed on you by the school board. Once you put that ballot in the mail, you have no control; anyone opening has access to all your information and how you voted.

During the Measure A election in 2011, 16,033 (97.3 percent) ballots were opened, scanned and tallied before the polls closed. Only 444 ballots from the box at the Stephens Branch Library in Davis were processed and tallied on Election Night. The public was never informed about this prior to or after the election.

On Election Night, I observed the staff duplicating ballots for those who had turned in their sample ballot instead of the real ballot. Those ballots should be invalid and not counted, but all of them were yes votes.

Court records and testimony revealed that ballots were opened 11 days before Election Day (April 22), apparently in violation of the law. The law allows “absentee” ballots to be opened seven days before. We are not absentee voters.

Since the process of Measure C eliminates the polls, there are no observers, poll workers counting the number of ballots with public presence at the polls.

Ballots are opened and scanned only by the elections staff before the polls close. Once a ballot is scanned, the yes/no votes are registered in the computer and that information is available. In her court documents, Oakley basically admitted this. She wrote: “It is true that some or most of the mail-in ballots may be tallied (entered into the computer system by election staffers) prior to the close of polls, but it is the practice and procedure of the Elections Office to not run any count of mail-in ballots until the polls close on Election Day.”

In other words, “just trust me.” The document showing the results and tally of the 16,033 before the polls closed speaks for itself.

While the clerk’s office claims anyone can come and watch, that person would have to stay for a month that the election lasts. In her court documents, Oakley could not name one single independent person, from outside her office, independent organizations, private citizens or the grand jury, who had watched the opening and counting of 16,033 ballots before the polls closed.

The process is fraudulent. Once the voting starts in a normal, fair election, all campaigning and voter registration must stop. You register to vote, both sides present their arguments, Election Day arrives and you vote. The votes are counted after the polls close.

In the process of Measure C, the election started Feb. 6, and people are allowed to register until Feb. 21 while others have already started voting. Others are campaigning for a month, including the school board.

You have seen their attempt to manipulate the election while people are still voting. In article after article in the paper, they terrorize the voters by holding the teachers’ jobs hostage to pressure voters into approving the measure.

Meanwhile, others in the Elections Office are opening the ballots before Election Day. They periodically report the number of ballots received, which in this case is the number of votes received. The fact that information is not kept confidential until the polls close makes this election an unfair election.

Periodic releases of the number of ballots received can be used as statistical data that either side can use to its advantage. Even without saying how many yes or no votes there are, observers can predict how the election is going. Demographics, voter habits and party registration are statistical data readily available on Davis voters, enough to measure what each side needs to do to influence the election.

It is clear that the all-mailed-ballot process significantly reduces oversight to maintain the integrity and fairness of an election.

In filing a lawsuit to suppress the above discussion on this election, the county clerk lost her credibility and demonstrated she is not impartial. She is not neutral and yet has complete control of the ballots that will determine the result of Measure C.

If Measure C passes, you should expect the imposition of a whole alphabet of new measures that impose these parcel taxes for as long as you own your home. There are very good reasons to reject Measure C, the new, more expensive tax, and very good reasons to reject this fraudulent process by voting no on Measure C.

— Jose Granda has lived in Davis for 33 years and is an organizer of the No School Board Taxes Political Action Committee. He is an engineering professor at Sacramento State University.

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