By Rafael Guzman
The Recall volunteers have formed a Political Action Committee (PAC) called the Foundation for Transparence in Government Political Action Committee in an effort to continue the effort to defend the constitutional rights of the 8000+ registered voters who signed the recall petitions, especially, those names that were rejected.
Having a PAC gives the volunteers the ability to solicit, collect and spend donated funds that will be required to pay the legal bills to fight the recall in court. The Foundation is very confident that the recall will be successful mainly given the facts that so many irregularities were found in the verification process performed by the City’s Election Department and that the City Board of Registrars refused to hear and re-verify the over one thousand names that were rejected and found by the Foundation to be of registered voters.
For instance, of the thousands of rejected names, over 100 names were a perfect match. The recall petition asked the voters for their current address and not the address where the voter registered. Names were missing from the voter registration list used to verify the names, December 2, 2015 list, and later found in a December 23 list (like voter id #01sya2487001 who registered in 2006 and was missing from the December 2 list, but it’s found on the December 23 list). Street addresses and last names were changed, etc.
The Foundation will be publishing its findings shortly in a website that’s being developed for the purpose of keeping the City stakeholders, especially the voters, informed about the process. While the Foundation waits for a Voter Activity Report from November through December 15 requested from the City and once the Foundation concludes its own exhaustive verification and publish its findings on all the rejected signatures, it will request the State and Federal government appropriate agencies to conduct an official investigation of the City recall verification process and the Election Department as a whole.
Finally, the Foundation for Transparency in Government PAC announces that it will be launching an official fund raising campaign across the City looking for City residents to donate whatever they can, as low $5 to a maximum high of $500 per person, to pursue that the recall signers be heard and their constitutional rights respected by this and future City administrations.
