The appeal comes following a ruling by Judge William McLafferty, who heard the case in Santa Barbara County
Superior Court, and criticized Pappas for filing the lawsuit in the first
place, saying that he did not see a shred of evidence that merited the filing.
Pappas’ personal attorney, Stan Green, said in an April
14 e-mail there are several reasons for the appeal. The brief supporting the
appeal has not yet been filed, Green said.
Pappas will continue to be represented by the law firm of
Theodora Oringher Miller & Richman PC.
Under state elections code, the original suit was filed
against Doreen Farr, the current 3rd District Supervisor. The appeal was filed
against Farr as well.
Farr’s attorney, Frederic Woocher,
had the following to say on behalf of his client: “Our reaction is that this is
a frivolous appeal and a continuing abuse of the judicial process by Pappas and
his handful of wealthy supporters.”
Pappas’ attorney sees it differently.
“Mr. Pappas believes it is extremely important to appeal
the trial court’s decision to assure that HAVA laws and the California Election
Codes are followed and that they fairly govern our election system,” Green
said.
HAVA is the acronym for the Help America Vote Act, a
legislation that streamlined the voter registration process.
Woocher
thinks that going back over any of the case will be a waste of time.
“Albert Einstein reportedly said that the definition of
‘insanity’ is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different
results,” he said. “If Pappas expects to obtain any different result in his
appeal than he received in the trial court, then by this definition, he truly
is insane.”
The central argument in the original case was that
registration of thousands of student voters in Isla Vista and on the University
of California, Santa Barbara campus in the weeks leading up to the registration
was done in violation of county election protocol.
Chief Elections Officer and County Clerk-Recorder Joe
Holland and his staff all testified that procedures were followed according to
election laws during the four days of case testimony that was heard in March.
One of the primary thrusts of the appeal is the concern
raised by Pappas that voter registration cards may have been held past a
three-day time frame in which they are supposed to be submitted after being
filled out.
McLafferty did
not allow any of the details about the three-day issue to be presented as part
of the Pappas case.
“I will not consider any evidence about the violation of
the three-day rule; that will be a complete waste of our time,” McLafferty said when he ruled on the issue in February.
“One of the most significant issues is the failure of the
court to allow testimony of the violation of the three-day rule,” Green wrote.
“Thousands of registration cards were held by persons
registering voters well beyond the three-day period. In fact, many of these
registrations were among the thousands submitted to the county Register’s
Office on the last day to submit registration cards.
“We believe this led to the inability of the Registrar’s
Office to properly process new and re-registrants. We further believe that the
three-day rule was designed to preclude possible voter fraud as well as to
preclude ‘jamming’ the Registrar’s Office shortly before an election,” Green
said.
The ‘jamming’ he refers to is the concept of having the
county voter registrar being overwhelmed by ballots in the final days before an
election.
In court, the elections staff described the volume of
submissions they received in late October 2008 as something akin to that.
Woocher
argued in court that there is no merit to the argument that not turning in the
cards promptly could have influenced the election.
The case is not yet scheduled for a court date.
Reach Leah Etling at
letling@syvjournal.com.