Council member Madison Nguyen, long the subject of protests by the plaintiff group, was elated. She told the Bolsavik, “The summary judgment clearly states none of the councilmember violated the Brown Act,” which is not exactly what the order said.

The plaintiff group Vietnamese-American Community of Northern California, on the other hand, sent out a notice to Vietnamese press (read here) saying the judge “has recognized that there was a Brown Act violation,” which isn’t true either.

Judge Mark H. Pierce‘s order, received Thursday (read here), ended the controversy over whether the City Council communicated improperly before voting to name the Story Road area “Saigon Business Distrct.” The plaintiff had claimed that the City Council violated the Brown Act through a series of email exchanges before the meeting.

The email allegedly resulted in a pre-meeting agreement by the majority to choose the name “Saigon Business District” over other names including “Little Saigon.” And the Council did vote in November 2007 to use the name “Saigon Business District.”

As protests erupted, the Council in its March 2008 meeting revoked its previous decision.

Judge Pierce (whom the plaintiff described in its press release as a new judge who lacks knowledge and experience) held that “the City Council’s alleged use of a series of communications to deliberate . . . was cured by its rescinding of Resolution No. 74127 on March 4, 2008.”

The alleged violation was thus cured, albeit not within the required 30-day period. However, the judge held that the “failure to cure its violation within 30 days is a ‘one-time past offense’ that is unrelated to a present or future violation.” Hence, no grounds for an injunction or declaratory relief.

Left alive is the second cause of action in which VACNORCAL alleges that the City improperly required them to pay $3,800 before complying with a Public Records Act request.

The Bolsavik suspects that whatever records requested were already produced as part of the lawsuit’s discovery, so it is unclear what kind of injunction would be appropriate now.

The plaintiff’s press release said they would “appeal to a higher court.” However, the group’s web site, several hours later still says they’re “deciding whether to pursue an appeal.”

Turns out people don’t need the Bolsavik after all. While the Bolsavik was at orchestra practice, polls closed in San Jose and Councilwoman Madison Nguyen handily won 55-45, according to numbers with all precincts reported here. This blog’s readers were already leaving comments here about the election result, even before the Bolsavik ever made it past his front door.

In another sign that the traditional polling booth may be becoming obsolete day by day, this special election was decided most by mail ballots, with 9,502 people voting by mail and only 2,247 showing up at the precincts.

That’s more than 4-to-1 voting by mail.

According to the paper, the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters found that at least 4,775 of the 5,180 signatures submitted (read here) were valid. Only 3,162 valid signatures are required.

With the verification step done, all that remains is to go through the formalities, and a special election will be held.

The parties recently sparred over whether the recall ballot should also include the election of a replacement. Doing so would favor a successful recall. Read more here.

However, it appears that the San Jose city charter does not allow that.

So, the ballot will most likely be a simple yes-or-no question on whether to recall Madison Nguyen, the first Vietnamese-American elected official in Northern California.

San Jose City Councilwoman Madison Nguyen (pictured) is facing efforts to recall her over the City’s decision to name a stretch of Story Road. The chosen name, “Saigon Business District,” is somehow seen as communist, as opposed to “Little Saigon.” So now the City’s taken back its decision and there’s no official name for the area. The City did give permits for privatedly funded banners proclaiming “Welcome to Little Saigon.” But apparently whatever name is not even the point any more.

More than three weeks ago (here), the group supporting the recall submitted 5,181 signatures asking for a recall election. The petition is impressive because it includes more than 2000 extra signatures (only 3,162 were needed) and it was submitted two whole weeks before the deadline.

The signatures are now being verified by the Registrar of Voters. The verification process will take 30 days.

Until then, there is no guarantee that there’s even any recall election at all.

But already the Recall Madison side is acting up over what the recall ballot may look like.

Someone leaked to them the idea that the recall ballot will be just that — “yes” or “no” on recall only. Allegedly, any replacement candidates will not run on the same election.

That made the recall side angry, and here’s why.

The recall side’s strategy has been to let the replacement candidates do the recall work for them.

According to Dr. Phu Le, a very vocal opponent of Madison Nguyen’s, in an interview with the Bolsavik, the strategy, budget and manpower has been concentrated on getting the recall election set up, and not on getting out the vote on the day of the recall election. (That’s Phu Le in the picture, holding a commendation from Assemblyman Van Tran; sitting next to him is Bryan Do, also a recall proponent.)

The thinking was, once there’s an election, people who line up to replace Madison will bring their own supporters. Left on their own, these supporters may or may not want to recall Madison Nguyen, but if their candidate is on the ballot to replace here, then these supporters will vote “yes” on the recall side, because otherwise there would be no point in voting for their candidate.

Here’s an illustrative example. Hypothetically, suppose there are 10,000 voters altogether. Suppose 4,000 want to recall Madison. Of the remaining 6,000 who don’t, there are 1,500 fans of candidate B who prefer B over Madison.

If the ballot were a straight “yes” or “no” recall, Madison would win, 6,000 to 4,000.

If it were a “Gray Davis” style ballot, with yes-no recall and candidate B on the ballot as a replacement, the 1,500 fans of B will presumably mark “yes” on the recall side as part of getting B elected. Madison would then lose 5,500 to 4,500, and B would be elected on 1,500 votes out of 10,000.

So you see the difference. With only a yes-or-no ballot, the recall proponents would need to garner more than 50% in support. With a Gray Davis style ballot, they need to do nothing and just let the replacement candidates, whose collective support add up to more than 50%, do the work for them.

(If you may recall – pun intended – during the Gray Davis recall election, the Schwarzenegger camp spent a lot of time and money trying to make sure he’d get more than 50% and not get stigmatized as some sort of default minority-vote candidate; and he did.)

The flip side is, if the replacement candidates are not on the same ballot, then there may need to be two elections, at untold millions in cost and a waiting period where there’s no representation for Madison’s District 7.

A recall supporter has emailed out the following text, allegedly to be part of a mail-in campaign to demand that the recall ballot include replacement candidates.

(Here’s a wild thought: Can’t Madison be on the ballot as a “replacement” candidate too?)

Dear Honorable Mayor Reed and Council Members,

As a San Jose resident, I would like to applaud Mayor Reed for Reed Reforms, in which the number one reform has been the changes in the charter to streamline the recall election process for our city. I also would like to applaud the rest of the city council members for following Mayor’s lead in approving this reform on February 6, 2007.

The proposed change to follow CA State Election Code allows “a more streamlined, efficient recall process with one election deciding the question of whether to recall the official and, if so, who will serve the remainder of the term”, as stated by the City Attorney.

As a concerned citizen, I would like to resonate that we are having the worst deficit in the history of our city; so, a combined election, modeled after the State, is badly needed.
Thus, for the special recall election of Councilmember Nguyen (District 7), we strongly recommend the City of San Jose to use the State’s model of combined election as it’s not in any way conflicting with our current City Charter, which would save at least half a million dollars of our taxpayers’ money.

Furthermore, peace and business as usual at the City Hall will be quickly restored with a single (combined) election instead of having to drag it to at least another 3-4 months with two separate elections.

Lastly, many residents in District 7 has always been underserved, having two separate elections will prolong the time the residents of District 7 lacking the badly needed leadership that they long deserve.

For the sake of our city, as well as that of the residents of District 7, please cast your vote to support a combined election format when it comes up in the council meeting.

Thank you for your time and attention on this important matter.

Best regard,

Name: _____________________________________________________

Address: ___________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

Phone: _____________________________________________________

Anyway, according to this letter, it’s now too late for Madison Nguyen’s camp to try to get people to retract; apparently the deadline to retract was 5pm the day the petition was turned in.

Also, it seems that if the City Clerk’s Office certifies the petition as insufficient, that decision cannot be challenged — but the email says nothing about appealing a certification of the petition as sufficient.

Full text of the email follows after the jump. The “ROV” in the letter is short for Registrar of Voters. The verification must be done by the ROV because the signatures must be of registered voters in Madison Nguyen’s district.

From:   Price, Lee 
Sent:   Monday, September 01, 2008 2:46 PM
To:     #CityCouncil_PO; #MayorPO; Figone, Debra; Doyle, Richard; Attard, Barbara; Mavrogenes, Harry; Erickson, Sharon
Cc:     #CityClerkPO
Subject:        Recall Petition Filed; Next Steps
 
 
On Friday, August 30th, the proponents of the recall effort filed their petition.  On prima facie review, we determined that the petition has approx 5,181 signatures (raw count); which exceeds the required number of qualified signatures needed (3,162). Tomorrow morning Dennis and I will take the petition to the County ROV for verification.  The process, under State law, will be as follows:

1) The ROV has 30 days from the date of the filing of the petition, excluding weekends and holidays, to determine if the petition is sufficient or insufficient.

2) The ROV will conduct a random, statistical sampling for verification of signatures.  The random sample of signatures to be verified will be conducted using the ROV’s trusted computerized program.  The random sampling will incude an examination of 500 signatures (the law specifies 5% or 500 whichever is greater).  Requests to withdraw received and on file in my office as of 5:00 p.m. the day before the petition was submitted will be verified, factored in and honored (there were 147 received).

3) If the statistical sampling shows that the number of valid signatures is greater than 110 percent of the required number (3,162), the petition will be certified sufficient.  In that case, Council action to call a special election will be required within 14 days of the date the ROV certifies the petition to be sufficient.

4) If the statistical sampling shows that the number of valid signatures is within 90 to 110 percent of the number of signatures of qualified voters needed to declare the petition sufficient, the ROV will be obligated to examine and verify each signature filed.  If the number verified is greater than 3,162, then the petition will be deemed sufficient.  If the number is less than 3,162, then the petition will be certified as insufficient.

5) If the statistical sampling shows that the number of valid signatures is less than 90 percent of the required number, the ROV shall certify the petition to be insufficient.

6) If the petition is certified insufficient, there is no challenge process available to the proponents.

I will continue to keep the Mayor/Council and Council Appointees apprised of the status of the petition verfication process.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Lee Price, MMC
City Clerk
City of San Jose
200 East Santa Clara Street – Wing 2nd Floor
San Jose, CA 95113
(408) 535-1252
(408) 292-6207 (FAX)
lee.price@sanjoseca.gov

Read the San Jose Mercury News story here. Read more on the Little Saigon Inside blog here.

According to the Little Saigon Inside blog, the recall team said they actually gathered 7,000 signatures, but didn’t want to have to verify them all so submitted only the 5,181.

Supporters of the recall efforts (not themselves on the committee) gave the Bolsavik various explanations as to why the committee submitted the signatures two weeks early. One said they wanted to show up the people who were badmouthing that they didn’t even have 1000 signatures. Other thought they were tired and just wanted to get it done and over with and move on.

Well, whatever the reason, it struck the Bolsavik that the recall camp may not have thought it through and may have handed Madison Nguyen an advantage.

Part of Madison’s strategy has always included getting people who’d signed to retract their signatures. Her web site has “Withdraw Name from Petition” in big bold letters right below the two flags.

With the signatures submitted, the recall side has handed over on a silver platter the specific names and addresses for anti-recall supporters to target.

If 3,162 signatures remain on the petition, the city will have to hold a recall election. It’s too late now for this November, so a special election will have to be set up. The cost of just such an election — $350,000 — has been part of Madison ngueyn’s argument against recalling her.

Just as the Bolsavik was pointed to the web site where the mailer was posted, the Bolsavik was also pointed to Madison’s Vietnamese site, where recordings from interviews on Que Huong Radio are posted — here.

Que Huong Radio is a controversial anti-communist radio program with its own set of enemies, that is has broken with other right-wing groups and instead supported Madison Nguyen.

In the interview, Madison rejected the claim that she directed $100,000 of city money to Lap Tang. (Read more here and here.) Or that she tried to hide it.

Apparently, the $100,000 came with the original city resolution designating the Vietnamese business district (the resolution that started it all). Whereas query “do we need to hold public hearing” apparently refers to something that Lap Tang is paying for in full. The Bolsavik couldn’t quite catch what it was being built, but it appears to be a “Welcome to (whatever name was in discussion at the time)” gateway.

The Bolsavik found Madison’s wedding picture on her Facebook page. Her husband Terry Tran did not escape attacks. Numerous emails have claimed that her husband came from a high-ranking communist family — but it turned out that Terry’s father was a South Vietnamese Air Force sergeant who had worked as air traffic controller before the Fall of Saigon. Read “Madison Nguyen, on red-baiting” here.
 

The Bolsavik was pointed to the mailer at the Little Saigon Inside blog here. It is unknown whether the author of that blog is related to any of the several commenters on Bolsavik.com who name themselves little Saigon this or little Saigon that.

Anyway, the anti-Madison forces are keeping their lips really tight. “For tactical reasons,” said Dr. Phu Le during his interview with the Bolsavik (published here).

There are some rumblings, however, that the Recall Madison petition may have up to 3,000 signatures, of the 3,200 required to qualify for the November ballot. They have about a month to complete their signature gathering.

The rumblings may not be correct: If you only have another 200 signatures to go, chances are you wouldn’t be sending mailers, yes?

Anyway, both the recall and the anti-recall campaign will file their financial disclosure on July 31. The information there will reveal more than just the amount in the war chests.