Lynn Compton files restraining order against SLO County elections office

Attorneys for Lynn Compton filed a lawsuit Friday morning that asks a judge to order San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder Tommy Gong to stop accepting corrections of vote-by-mail ballot envelopes with mismatched signatures.

Every vote counted will matter in the tight race between Compton, an incumbent member of the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors, and challenger Jimmy Paulding. Each vote count measures the difference between the candidates at less than 100 votes.

As of Friday, Gong said there are 35 ballots from District 4 voters containing signatures that, election workers discovered, don't match the signatures on file.

In those cases, Gong said, he will continue to allow voters to fill out a form to confirm their ballot and have their vote counted through the voter canvass, which could run through next week.

In a lawsuit filed in San Luis Obispo County Superior Court, attorneys Charles Bell and Stewart Jenkins said Gong's plans violate election code, noting that the deadline for such signature corrections was 5 p.m. Wednesday. The attorneys state that "these late ballots should be identified and maintained separately (but not processed for counting) during the pendency of this action."

Compton's attorneys also requested a restraining order against Gong.

They pointed to to California Election Code 3019(f), which says, "If an elections official determines that a voter has failed to sign the identification envelope, the elections official shall not reject the vote by mail ballot if the voter .... signs the identification envelope at the office of the elections official during regular business hours before 5 p.m. on the eighth day after the election."

In response to the lawsuit, Gong said he will not stop receiving voter corrections and said the time limit the lawsuit references is a new law that only applies to ballots with no signature, not to those with mismatched signatures.

"Find me a code section that shows it applies to non-matched signatures," Gong said.

He said elections code is silent on when officials can stop providing voters with the opportunity to correct the signature and have their vote counted, so he relies on election code that mandates vote-by-mail provisions "shall be liberally construed in favor of the vote by mail voter."

Ballot signatures may vary from signatures on file for a variety of reasons, Gong said. They may be unmatched because it wasn't signed by the voter, or simply because a voter's signature changed since they registered decades ago, because a younger voter's signature changed, or as is common in the aging population, the voter's signature is shaky.

Contested ballots with mismatched signatures are not opened, so there is no way to know which candidate would receive any of the 35 votes.

Officials do know how those voters are registered. Twelve are registered Democrat, nine are registered Republican, nine have no party preference, four are registered as American Independents and one belongs to the Libertarian Party, according to Gong.

None of those voters have attempted to cure their ballot issue since Compton's attorneys first asked Gong to stop processing those ballots, Gong said Friday.

The way counties handle such ballots varies, and Gong said the Secretary of State's Office has not issued any guidance or recommendation regarding them — as it has on other issues pertaining to new election laws and vote-by-mail ballots.

What Compton's attorneys have not challenged are the ballots that had mismatched signatures that were processed before Wednesday.

In total, there were 122 ballots with mismatched signatures in District 4. Eighty-seven of those were remedied before the alleged deadline that Compton's attorneys assert.

A hearing on the issue will be held at 8:30 a.m. Monday in front of Judge Barry LaBarbera, but the issue might be irrelevant by then.

The next results election return is scheduled to be released Friday afternoon.

This story was originally published June 15, 2018 at 2:45 PM with the headline "Lynn Compton files restraining order against SLO County elections office."