Judge Benjamin Hanna granted a preliminary injunction Friday morning to stop Shasta County’s Measure B from moving forward.
The measure would make a number of changes Hanna said were in direct violation of state law, like hand-counting ballots and severely restricting mail-in voting.
The California Attorney General sued the county shortly after the measure passed. The county board of supervisors voted to not defend the measure in court, so instead the proponents who got the measure on the ballot took the county’s place.
Liam O’Connor from the Attorney General’s office said the argument behind the preliminary injunction is that parts of the measure clearly violate state law and it’s impossible to separate the legal parts from the illegal.
O’Connor disagreed with arguments that the hand-counting provision of the measure could be applied to the 1% manual tally that occurs post-election.
“Proponents voted for something completely different,” he said.
O’Connor said it’s unknown if voters would have approved a version of Measure B that didn't include some of the major components that made up the measure.
Speculation from the County Clerk-elect Joanna Francescut is that voters may have approved the measure because of the heavy promotion of the voter ID provision. That would require that voters show a photo ID at the polling place to be able to vote. Past polling has shown wider support for voter ID than some of the other changes in the measure.
Alexander Haberbush represented the supporters of Measure B in court. Haberbush said there isn’t enough proof that all of the measure should be thrown out, even if some of the provisions were deemed illegal.
“Measure B was enacted by the voters of Shasta County,” said Haberbush in a statement after the ruling. “And we do not believe the State has established a lawful basis for preventing implementation of the voters’ exercise of their charter authority merely because Sacramento objects to the election reforms they adopted.”
Part of the argument has been about the powers that Shasta County has as a charter county.
Judge Hanna disagreed with Haberbush. He said that while charter counties have additional powers, those can’t extend beyond the state constitution.
He added that the California Supreme Court has said that the integrity of elections is a matter of statewide concern, and should be addressed by the legislature, not individual counties.
He found that the four main provisions of the measure directly contradict state law. That includes the voter ID requirements, restricting mail-in voting, hand-counting ballots and creating a new voter roll independent of the state.
Hanna also concluded that most of the legal parts of the measure are so inextricably linked to the illegal portions, that the measure can’t be split up. He said that the community’s opposition to state election laws isn’t justification for breaking them.
The preliminary injunction was granted because Hanna found that it’s likely the AG’s office will prevail in the lawsuit, and that the harms are too great if the measure is allowed to be implemented in November.
Hanna’s concern is that such a quick adjustment to how elections are conducted will lead to voters being confused, and that could dissuade them from casting a ballot.
County Elections Official Clint Curtis said that means nothing will be changing in how the November election is run.
Curtis said the measure’s supporters would have to get an emergency appeals court ruling before August 27 if they want these changes to take place for November.
August 27 is the ‘point of no return’ when a decision has to be made one way or the other. That’s when ballots will start getting prepared to be mailed to voters.
Haberbush did not confirm that he would be seeking an appeal of this ruling. But said his team intends to vigorously defend the measure voters approved.
Attorneys will be reconvening on August 24 to determine the schedule for the remainder of the case. This preliminary injunction is just that, preliminary. And the court will make a final ruling on the case in the future.
