On Marh 25, a California state trial court ruled that voters who sign petitions for candidates must fill out the address blank personally. If the petition signer lets someone else fill in the address, the signature is invalid. Calhoon v Weber, 26WM000063, Sacramento Superior Court. As a result, the plaintiff, Earnest Rey Calhoon, will not be on the ballot for Assembly, 79th district.
This is an absurd ruling. What if a person has trouble printing? Printing an address is not forgery. The only thing which really needs to be in the handwriting of the signer is the signature.
If you can’t print, you shouldn’t be voting.
Voting needs to be separated from learning the ABCs. More and more young people are functionally and even fully illiterate. The percentage of those is growing, at an accelerating rate.
Before the end of this century, the overwhelming majority of the population will be completely illiterate. Literacy will be at or below medieval levels. Spelling will be seen in the original sense of casting spells by almost everyone.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/03/26/no-kings-protests-trump/89136848007/?tbref=hp
NOOOO kings protests
will tyrant trump order the dept of war hacks/goons/robots to use machine guns on them ???
LOL @ nAZi-666 spambot, USSR Yesterday fake news, and “no kings” Losers.
IF TRUMP WAS A TYRANT THE nAZi-666 SPAMBOT WOULD BE ALREADY DEPROGRAMMED, ITS PROGRAMMER WOULD BE DEAD OR IN A SECRET PRISON, AND THIS WEBSITE WOULD ALREADY BE OFFLINE !!!
Yeah, because Trump had the loser fools mowed down with machine guns at previous “no kings” moron pride rallies ???
@Andy,
California Elections Code $100.5 provides that another person may afix the address and printed name if the signer is unable to do so. This is separate from the signer being required to make a mark that is witnessed.
I’m guessing that there were entire pages where the printed name and addresses were in the same handwriting, and perhaps even a different ink. The registrar might have wanted an easy out rather than checking the signatures. There is not a reliable way to determine that a signer has actually also printed the name and address. At the DMV, they may have printed an application after normalizing the address and had the applicant sign that, and then send the captured signature over to the SOS or registrar.
40 signatures in an assembly district of 500,000 persons is not an impossible task for the candidate personally. Because of the residency requirement, it may be simplest to go door to door. Someone running for assembly probably has 40 friends or acquaintances. If you are personally gathering signatures you should know enough to have the signer print their name and address.
Ernest Rey Calhoon is facing disbarment proceedings. That might even be his motivation for running for office.
How do they know where the signatures were gathered if assistance was allowed in some circumstances? For example, what if they were gathered at a nursing home or physical therapy office?
@Q,
If the signer is unable to sign, their mark must be witnessed (and SOS regulations extend this to the printed name and address).
The SOS regulations state that if the signer did not use their own handwriting to write their printed name or address that the signature is invalid. The county registrar probably does not know what a voter’s handwriting looks like. They do have a copy of the signature. It appears that the San Diego registrar inferred that because many of the addresses and printed name were in the same hand, that at most one of them could be in the hand of the signer.
Looking through some of the declarations this might not have happened. In California, district candidates need 40 signatures, but may only submit 60. The filing fee is paid before signatures are submitted, and the candidate is handed 6 sheets with 10 signature lines each. When the candidate asked if he could have extra sheets, he was told no, but you can make copies. After he turned in his first batch, he collected 12 more. He was at the registrars office at the deadline, but hadn’t heard whether he had 40 valid signatures. Asking for the status from a clerk, he mentioned that he needed to know whether to collect more signatures, and was told it was no problem to submit the 12 signatures then.
He was not informed of his deficiency until after the deadline. His first batch of 60 had 31 valid signatures; and his second 12 had two more valid. If we assume that some of the signatures were not valid for other reasons such as the signer not being registered, or not living in the district, or giving an invalid address, then there may be relatively few signatures without addresses. The candidate may not have had sense enough to make copies of the petition, or to ask to see the registrar’s markups. “address not in a signers hand” could cover “no address”, “address written in by spouse”, “address indicated by ditto marks”, etc.
Does the circulator count as a witness?
@Q,
The witness must also sign the petition as having witnessed the mark. If circulating a petition, I would be cautious about also witnessing. The witness would generally be expected to print the signer’s name and address. A page full of X’s with the circulator witnessing the marks would raise scrutiny.
In Texas, there was a case of a citizen investigator getting access to the actual ballot papers of absentee voters from a nursing home. All of them had a scrawly vote for the top of the ticket, then all the other offices on all the ballots marked with the same firm hand. There has also been legislation to send election officials to an address if there are more than a few requests for absentee ballots from a single location.
I don’t think this applies to the Calhoon case. I think he was just careless in his signature collection.
Isn’t that what the California circulator declaration says – that the circulator witnessed all the signatures?
If filing fees are allowed for ballot access, the only addresses needed are those of the candidates.
If we go to standing count or even voice vote by party, no candidate addresses are needed either.
At Jim Riley — show up this please: “The SOS regulations state that if the signer did not use their own handwriting to write their printed name or address that the signature is invalid.” It appears all the SOS has for proof they have ever adopted section 100 as applicable to legislative or congressional nominating petitions is this line: “All signers must be registered voters in the district or political subdivision in which the candidate is to be voted on. §§ 100, 8068″ and that line is buried in pages and pages of manuals, and that is all that can be found?
(unless you have something? do you? from any Current Secretary of State Written Manual? How about an Secretary of State Manual ever?)
As 8068 is the section which clearly stands for the proposition that the nominators must be in the district, and 100 is a long multi section meandering section which twice seems to exclude legislative and congressional races, well then as that is the only reference to 100 for the proposition that the nominators must live in the district, does that not imply the rest of 100 is inapplicable to these candidate nominations?
Any case, what do you have for other section beyond: “All signers must be registered voters in the district or political subdivision in which the candidate is to be voted on. §§ 100, 8068”. Thank you.
JQ
It may be more useful to ask on a more current post since this one is buried multiple pages back by now.
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/593/031/291/demand-the-disbarment-of-ernest-rey-calhoon-sbn153917-now/
Plaintiff ?