Senator George Runner
Serving the 17th District which incorporates portions of the Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Ventura and Kern counties.

SACRAMENTO – Sen. George Runner (R- Antelope Valley) filed a petition yesterday in Sacramento Superior Court to compel Attorney General Jerry Brown to comply with state election laws. Specifically, Runner has requested the court to issue a writ of mandate that requires Brown to prepare a true and impartial summary of Vote SAFE – an anti-fraud ballot initiative – so that voter signatures can be collected to qualify for next year’s election cycle.

“Vote SAFE proposes common-sense changes to ensure greater fairness and less opportunity for fraud in California elections,” Runner said. “It requires voters to display state or federal photo I.D. before voting at the polls. Voters without I.D. will still be allowed to vote provisionally.”

Runner added, Vote SAFE will make absentee ballots more secure and ensure that military ballots mailed on or before Election Day are counted, Despite the fact that that United States Supreme Court upheld a similar initiative voter I.D. requirement (in 2007), Attorney General Brown has twice prepared a title summary for Vote SAFE that characterizes the initiative as a prohibition against voting.

Brown describes Vote SAFE as follows:
“Limits on Voting. Initiative Statute prohibits citizens from voting at the polls unless they present a government issued photo-identification card. Establishes provisional voting for citizens at the polls who fail to present government-issued photo identification.

Brown’s summary is not only internally conflicted it simply does not reflect Vote SAFE, which expressly provides that no voter shall be prohibited from voting because of a failure to display photo-identification.

Conversely, when Bill Lockyer was California’s attorney general in 2005, he decided that the truth would suffice when he prepared a title and summary for a proposed voter I.D. initiative. His title and summary said: “Voter Identification Requirement Statute. Requires that voters present one of four types of picture identification before voting.”

Runner V. Brown contends that this attorney general, unlike Lockyer, failed to summarize the facts and instead took sides and distorted the summary. More troubling is that Brown is in lockstep with ACORN in its opposition of the voter I.D. law approved by the United States Supreme Court.

Because of Runner’s lawsuit, the court must decide whether Brown has fulfilled the requirement of the law or served as an obstruction.