California has sued Huntington Seashore, alleging that town’s new regulation requiring voters to indicate photograph identification is a violation of state regulation.
The 320-page lawsuit, filed Monday in Orange County Superior Court docket, accuses Huntington Seashore of violating California’s Structure and the state election code over a brand new constitution modification that will require voters to indicate photograph identification in native elections beginning in 2026.
Huntington Seashore has argued that town constitution grants native officers the authority to deal with municipal points, together with native elections. Along with the photograph identification requirement, the modification requires that Huntington Seashore present 20 in-person polling locations and monitor poll drop bins.
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta stated Monday that Huntington Seashore’s constitution doesn’t exempt town from following state legal guidelines that govern voter registration and election integrity. The photograph identification requirement “just isn’t solely misguided — it’s blatantly and flatly unlawful,” Bonta stated at a information convention in downtown Los Angeles.
“They’ve drastically overstated the authority they suppose they’ve,” stated Bonta, a Democrat. “They’ve willfully violated the regulation, they’ve overtly violated the regulation. … They know precisely what they’re doing, and they’re doing it anyway.”
Voters in Huntington Seashore accredited the regulation by passing Measure A on the March 5 poll, with 53.4% help. Michael Gates, Huntington Seashore’s metropolis lawyer, stated in an announcement that “the folks of Huntington Seashore have made their voices clear on this situation.”
“The town will vigorously uphold and defend the desire of the folks,” Gates stated.
Bonta’s lawsuit is the newest conflict between California and Huntington Seashore, which has thrust itself into the crosshairs of state lawmakers and the nation’s tradition wars for the reason that begin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the last 4 years, officers within the conservative seashore city have declared it a “no masks and no vaccine-mandate” metropolis, sued the state over zoning necessities so as to add housing and a “sanctuary metropolis” immigration regulation, created a panel to display kids’s books within the metropolis library for sexual content material and accredited the voter ID measure for the March poll regardless of threats of a lawsuit.
After the Huntington Seashore Metropolis Council started discussing the voter ID measure final fall, Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, California’s high election official, warned in a letter to metropolis officers that the measure was unlawful and will immediate a lawsuit.
California regulation requires voters to confirm their identities once they register to vote and imposes prison penalties for fraudulent registration, Bonta and Weber wrote. The state doesn’t require photograph identification on the polls however does require that voters present their names and addresses.
The Huntington Seashore Metropolis Council voted 4 to three in October to put the voter ID regulation on the March poll.
Councilmembers Tony Strickland and Gracey Van Der Mark, who backed the measure, wrote of their poll argument that “excessive insurance policies” permitting noncitizens to vote “have been spreading” and that the measure would “ceaselessly shield Huntington Seashore’s elections.”
Three council members who opposed the measure stated that town’s elections, overseen by the Orange County Registrar of Voters, are safe and that Huntington Seashore was not ready to supervise its personal elections.
Weber, a Democrat, stated Monday that her workplace investigates claims of voter fraud and has “not discovered it to be true that California, nor some other state, suffers from an amazing quantity of fraud.”
The voter ID measure “can be a answer searching for an issue,” Weber stated.
A Huntington Seashore resident sued in November to dam the voter ID measure. The ACLU of Southern California and Incapacity Rights California filed briefs in help of the lawsuit, arguing that voter ID legal guidelines impose extreme burdens on Black, Latino and low-income voters.
Orange County Superior Court docket choose Nick Dourbetas declined to cease the measure from showing on the poll however wrote in his December ruling that if the measure handed “and if its implementation raises a problem of constitutionality, at that time, it could be applicable for judicial evaluate.”
Bonta warned Huntington Seashore final fall that one other side of the constitution modification — monitoring poll drop bins — may additionally violate state regulation.
The state’s lawsuit doesn’t point out drop bins. Bonta stated state officers shall be watching how the Huntington Seashore regulation is carried out to make sure it doesn’t run afoul of a prohibition on taking images, movies or in any other case recording voters at polling locations or poll drop bins “with the intent of dissuading one other individual from voting.”
