Superior Court judge fails to rule on Green Party congressional nomination;
Terry Baum for Congress
8TH Congressional District www.terrybaum.com
URGENT NEWS ADVISORY
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Contact: Baum Campaign 415.424-5881 / Press office 916.996-9170
Superior Court judge fails to rule on
Green Party congressional nomination;
Says case ‘like hanging chad in Florida’
SAN FRANCISCO - Noting that the case is “like the hanging chad in
Florida,” a Superior Court judge Thursday again refused to make a ruling
over whether Green Party Congressional candidate Terry Baum actually won
her party’s primary and should be on the November ballot.
Judge Ronald E. Quidachay told the city attorney and counsel for Baum to
re-submit arguments and promised a ruling within 10 days, nearly 5 months
after the March primary election.
The non-decision left Baum and several dozen supporters in the courtroom
anxious about her campaign to wrest the 8th District seat from incumbent
Nancy Pelosi (D). Baum, a lesbian playwright in San Francisco and a staunch
anti-war and pro-civil rights activist, has built an army of campaign
backers who decry Pelosi’s vote for the Patriot Act and support for sending
even more troops to Iraq.
At issue are several hundreds write-in votes for Baum that were found, and
counted by the San Francisco Department of Elections. The DOE qualified
Baum as the winner of the Green nomination, but then later refused to
validate the disputed votes because people wrote in Baum’s name but did not
fill in a small arrow.
“These voters made clear their intent to vote for me by physically writing
in my name. The fact that they did not fill in an arrow does not and should
not invalidate their voting rights,” said Baum. Her lawyer argues the state
code cited by DOE is not applicable, and unconstitutional.
“This battle seems to drag on and on. Why did the city go to all the extra
effort to count those write-in votes for me, and then go to all this extra
effort to disqualify those votes,”asked Baum after the non-ruling.
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