Findings suggest new laws are necessary to make it harder for
non-citizens to vote
Gilroy – The major findings and recommendations of a civil grand jury report on county voting procedures are unfounded and impractical, Santa Clara County Registrar Jesse Durazo said Thursday.
The report, released Wednesday, urges Durazo and county supervisors to lobby state and federal legislators for new laws making it harder for non-citizens to vote and to play a larger role in special tax assessment elections. But Durazo said there was no evidence that non-citizen voting is a problem in the county and that the special elections, known as Proposition 218 elections, should not be in the registrar’s purview.
“I have heard no report of that nature,” Durazo said of non-citizen voting. “There is no empirical data to support that. When people sign [a voter registration card], they do so under perjury, under oath. They’re supposed to be truthful when they sign that and that’s the way our society works.”
Prop. 218 was a 1996 voter initiative that makes it harder to raise taxes through elections. A Prop. 218 election is when a special district, such as the county vector control department, holds a mail-ballot election to raise property taxes to fund operations. The ballots are sent only to property owners and votes are weighted according to the assessed value of property. The more a property is worth, the more weight the owner’s vote carries.
Such elections are typically managed by consultants. The grand jury report recommends that the registrar’s office either manage the elections or act as a “center of competency” to help ensure the elections are properly executed. Durazo said his office should not be involved with Prop. 218 elections because they don’t adhere to the principle of one vote for each citizen.
“Their database is totally different than mine,” Durazo said. “I want the whole world to know that only one vote is counted. We have one election with all registered voters and only one vote counts.”
By law, agencies must provide written responses to grand jury reports but have no obligation to follow recommendations. All reports about county departments are handled by county supervisors.
