Inglewood Ruling Pleases Nobody; All Plan Appeals

Inglewood plans to appeal a judge’s decision to annul the June runoff election of City Councilman Ervin (Tony) Thomas.

So does Thomas.

And Garland Hardeman, who challenged the election in court, plans to appeal the judge’s order to hold a new election rather than declare him the winner.

All parties in the acrimonious battle announced plans for further court action after Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Leon Savitch issued his written opinion this week on Hardeman’s lawsuit, which alleged widespread violations of the state Election Code.

State law allows Thomas to remain in the seat during the appeal process.

Meanwhile, Mayor Edward Vincent criticized Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Leon Savitch and Hardeman’s “eight white attorneys” for “scrutinizing the election of a black community.”

Judge Criticized

“Judge Savitch has taken the rights away from the minority voters of Inglewood,” Vincent said. “There were many things in the ruling that I know are not true.” The mayor, like Thomas and Hardeman, is black.

Hardeman was represented without charge by a team of four attorneys from the firm of Tuttle and Taylor. The firm frequently does unpaid work for disadvantaged and minority clients, including a recent discrimination lawsuit by Latino agents against the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit by pensioners against the federal government, attorney Greg Schetina said.

Attorney Fred Woocher of the nonprofit Center for Law in the Public Interest also helped represent Hardeman.

Hardeman said: “I don’t think the mayor’s criticisms have any relevance whatsoever. It’s a tactic that approaches gutter-level politics. He’s taking the voters for granted. He’s saying they aren’t intelligent enough to differentiate between the conclusion of a legal battle and an issue he’s raising to distract their attention from the finding that he and Thomas did something wrong.”

In his written ruling released this week, Savitch upheld almost all of the allegations made in Hardeman’s lawsuit, which claimed that Election Code violations were committed by Vincent and other Thomas campaign workers.

The judge threw out 58 of the 59 ballots Hardeman had challenged, almost all of them absentee votes. Among them were 14 cases alleging intimidation of voters and invasion of the secrecy of the ballot process by Thomas campaign workers.

In several of those cases, testimony implicated Vincent in Election Code violations, including three cases involving voter intimidation and invasion of ballot secrecy and another case involving invasion of voters’ rights of ballot secrecy. Savitch did not find sufficient evidence to support additional charges of coercion, which had been based on testimony that Vincent and other Thomas campaign workers went into voters’ homes, pressured them to vote and took away unsealed ballots.

Savitch also declared illegal the votes of Thomas’ three adult stepchildren because of evidence that they were residents of Los Angeles when they cast absentee ballots using his address in Inglewood’s 4th Councilmanic District.

Other grounds for eliminating ballots included ballots that listed Thomas’ campaign headquarters and boarded-up houses as voters’ addresses, ballots bearing signatures that a handwriting expert testified did not match ballot applications and county registration records, and ballots that evidence showed were illegally delivered to the polls by third parties after being picked up by Thomas, Vincent and other campaign workers.

Wrongdoing Denied

Vincent and Thomas have insisted that they did nothing wrong during an aggressive absentee ballot campaign, which helped gain 395 absentee votes for Thomas, wiped out Hardeman’s 70% lead in votes cast at the polls and gave Thomas a 626-to-610 victory.

Vincent this week specifically denied the accounts of two voters who said both in court and in newspaper interviews that he pressured them into voting and punched their ballots for them. One of the women, Nancy Armstrong, testified that she felt the mayor “took my rights away.”

Vincent said he collected the ballots but did not punch them or pressure the voters.

As to a case of Vinnell Lloyd, an elderly woman who testified that Vincent brought an absentee ballot to her home and told her which numbers to punch. Vincent said: “I don’t know anything about that.”

Vincent said the 4th Council District has a history of low voter turnout. He described his numerous visits to voters’ houses during the absentee ballot drive as efforts to “educate them to the voting process.”

No Winner Declared

Savitch concluded that 31 of the 58 illegal votes were cast for Thomas, wiping out Thomas’ victory margin of 16. (He said it could not be determined who the other 27 votes were for.) Yet he rejected a motion to declare Hardeman the winner, even though Hardeman’s attorneys cited Election Code section 20087, which reads: “If in any election contest it appears that another person than the defendant has the highest number of legal votes, the court shall declare that person elected.”

Savitch wrote that he did not declare Hardeman the winner because a new election would be “in the best interests of the electorate.”

“A substantial number of the votes were illegal because of failure to conform to election laws, particularly absentee voter election laws, which are ambiguous and fail to give clear direction to the voter,” Savitch said. “The court hopes that the decision . . . will enable the voters to vote for the candidate of their choice unhampered by the uncertainties of the absentee voter law.”

Woocher said he probably will file a writ asking that Hardeman be declared winner. Such a step is an expedited appeal that would focus on the judge’s remedy.

Law Said to Be Clear

“There’s nothing ambiguous about the fact that you have to fill out and sign your own ballot,” Woocher said. “The law couldn’t be clearer on the fact that you have to live in the district, that a third party can’t hand-deliver a ballot. The evidence showed that people knew they couldn’t do those things, but they did it anyway and got caught.”

“The judge gave us what we asked for and fought for, but his remedy didn’t follow the law,” said Hardeman, who is a Los Angeles police officer. “Thomas is still up there making decisions and he was put there by the equivalent of stuffing the ballot box.”

Hardeman said an appeal by the city would be a further “waste of time and money.”

City Atty. Howard Rosten said the decision reflected Savitch’s discontent with the absentee voter laws, which Rosten said was not suitable grounds to overturn the election.

“The issue is whether the city is competent to conduct our own elections,” Rosten told the council in recommending an appeal on behalf of the city and the city clerk.

Vote to Appeal

The council voted 4-0 to appeal, with Thomas not voting. Joining Vincent in the vote were council members Anthony Scardenzan, Anne Wilk and Danny Tabor. All three supported Hardeman’s campaign, but followed sentiments expressed by both Scardenzan and Tabor that the city should defend its election process.

Rosten and Robert Stroud, Thomas’ attorney, said their appeals will charge that evidence presented by Hardeman’s attorneys was insufficient.

“The evidence wasn’t there,” said Stroud, though he conceded that some of the 58 votes were probably illegal. “It was hearsay that we objected to. The judge gave the other side the benefit of the doubt. There were problems with the election, but there are problems with all elections.”

The date of a new election also may become an issue. Rosten said it would be held between 120 and 180 days after the appellate process ends, provided that the ruling is upheld.

Rosten said the City Charter calls for an election to be held within 120 days from the start of the vacancy, unless it can be consolidated with a regular election within an additional 60 days.

Woocher said the time period for a new election should be measured from Oct. 23, the date Savitch declared the 58 votes illegal.

Deborah Seiler, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office in Sacramento, said elections are overturned only once every few years in California.

Judges are reluctant to annul elections, said Woocher, “not because they don’t have the authority but because they rarely believe the circumstances warrant the action . . . (Savitch) clearly felt the evidence conclusively showed that the integrity of the election was violated.”