PALMDALE – City officials announced Tuesday that the California Court of Appeals ruled to allow Palmdale’s City Council election to go forward as scheduled on Nov. 5.
Palmdale officials said in their news release that the court’s ruling was based on the plaintiff’s own language in the injunction to stop the City Council election.
“As phrased, the injunction written in the disjunctive, permits the defendant to hold an at-large election and even count the votes but not to certify the results,” the court ruled.
Assistant City Attorney Noel Doran stated in the city’s announcement that the court found Palmdale’s appeal unnecessary due to the injunction, drafted by the plaintiff’s attorneys R. Rex Parris and Kevin Shenkman, which allows the election to go forward and be counted.
“The election results will be tabulated by the County of Los Angeles in the ordinary course of business, after which the city will present the results to the Court of Appeals,” said Doran, noting that the City of Palmdale plans to appeal the entire case at its conclusion.
Palmdale City Attorney Matthew Ditzhazy said the Court of Appeals “is prepared to decide the certification issue on a priority basis.”
“We strongly believe that the citizens of Palmdale have a right to vote for every elected official – not just one person from a district created by a Malibu attorney,” Doran said. “While the plaintiffs want you to believe that they are promoting the voting rights of some through their plan … in actuality, they are attempting to reduce every Palmdale citizen’s voting power by 80 percent and to do away with their right to directly elect the Mayor.”
Ditzhazy said the City of Palmdale’s election has been underway, featuring candidate debates that have been going on for more than a month. Additionally, absentee ballots already have been mailed out, and candidates have spent large sums of money on their campaigns.
“R. Rex Parris and Kevin Shenkman are making a mockery of our local electoral system at the expense of democracy and tax paying residents all so they can make a hefty payday,” said Ditzhazy. “We encourage every Palmdale voter to cast their vote for every elected office and exercise their Constitutional rights the people have fought and died for.”
Council members at Palmdale’s Oct. 1 meeting voted to approve a five-year contract with a San Rafael law firm to help the city appeal the preliminary injunction to cancel Palmdale’s Nov. 5 City Council election. The superior court ruling was the result of a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit that claims the city’s “at-large” election system illegally dilutes the votes of Latinos and African-Americans.
