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More than a month after the county elections office rejected its initial filing, the group seeking to recall Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki filed a lawsuit on May 8 to revive the effort.
Elections officials had originally validated the signatures needed to initiate the recall, then reversed course after finding that nearly half of the signatories lacked a proper address—many were missing city, zip code, or both.
The recall group, which is calling itself The Committee to Recall Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki and includes many of the same people leading the Velazquez recall effort, is suing Registrar of Voters Francisco Diaz for rejecting the notice of intention and for refusing to move the recall process forward even after Diaz acknowledged that zip codes are not required to approve the initial signatures.
“The Registrar’s conduct borders on the surreal,” reads the suit. “He has persisted in [the county elections department’s] decision to freeze the Kosmicki recall despite telling everyone—including this court—that his position is flat wrong as a matter of law.”
Diaz told BenitoLink that the rejection followed legal advice from county counsel, and that any decision going forward must be made by a judge.
“As with the prior lawsuit involving a separate recall effort, the parties now have access to the judicial process to resolve any disputes,” Diaz said. “The courts, rather than election officials, are the appropriate forum for resolving contested legal and political questions.”
The suit was filed in San Benito County Superior Court. The plaintiffs are seeking approval of the initial signatures so the recall can move forward; a declaration from Diaz that disqualifying signatures for missing zip codes violated the law; court costs and any other “appropriate relief.”
On March 23, the group seeking to remove Kosmicki submitted 98 signatures to begin the recall process in what is known as the notice of intention. A day later, Chief Deputy Clerk-Recorder-Elections Ana de Castro Maquiz notified Kosmicki, county administration and county counsel that her department had validated it, as it met the “legal requirements.”
On March 25, Kosmicki challenged the decision, arguing that some signatures were missing address information. A day later, De Castro Maquiz reversed course, finding that only 34 of the 60 needed were valid. Of the 64 rejected, 40 were deemed invalid for lacking an appropriate address, city or zip code.
Stacie McGrady, a spokesperson for the recall group, attributed the county election’s reversal to pressure from Kosmicki himself. McGrady is also co-chair of Safer San Benito, the organization leading a separate effort to recall Supervisor Ignacio Velazquez, which is on the June 2 ballot.
“The County elections personnel already verified the signatures and confirmed the recall
could move forward,” McGrady wrote in a statement. “After pressure from Supervisor Kosmicki, that decision was reversed,” she said. “Now taxpayers are stuck paying for a lawsuit that never should have happened.”
Kosmicki rejected the characterization. He said that, when de Castro Maquiz notified him that the initial signatures met the legal requirements, he challenged it, as he is allowed to do by law.
“There was no phone call, not one text message,” he said. “It’s not pressure. I’m just doing what I’m legally allowed to do, which is to point out the facts of the law.”
The California Elections Code states that a notice of intention shall contain “the printed name, signature, and residence address, including street and number, city, and ZIP Code, of each of the proponents of the recall.”
The lawsuit could be bolstered by the recent court ruling in the Velazquez recall. After Kosmicki’s notice of intention was rejected, Velazquez challenged his own recall on the same grounds, claiming that the initial signatures were missing zip codes.
On April 10, San Benito County Judge Omar Rodríguez found that signatures supporting the Velazquez recall—even with the missing address information—were valid. He said that the notice of intention “properly certified” by the election department under the “doctrine of substantial compliance,” a legal principle that allows actions to be recognized as valid even if they don’t follow all the specific rules set out in a law.
“San Benito Courts held in an identical case involving Supervisor Ignacio Velazquez affirming that minor technical issues cannot be used to block a recall effort when voters are clearly eligible,” McGrady said in her statement. “The law is settled, and even the registrar has acknowledged that.”
Kosmicki told BenitoLink he would not seek legal advice to challenge the lawsuit. He said he would focus on his work as a supervisor and not on the group, which he says has abused the recall process in both his case and Velazquez’s.
“This group has gone two years trying to harass certain public officials with whom they don’t agree on policy issues,” he said. “I’m focused on getting the roads fixed and serving District 2.”
Though the group seeking to recall Kosmicki is officially distinct from Safer San Benito, many of its members overlap. McGrady lamented that the county now faces a lawsuit at a time when it is short on funding.
“While this drags on, our county faces real challenges,” she said. “Traffic, lack of infrastructure and cuts to public safety are real issues affecting real people. We cannot afford to waste taxpayer dollars on avoidable legal battles.”
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