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In a milestone for the grassroots effort to unseat Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky for his alleged bias in sexual violence cases, the campaign has gathered the number of voter signatures required to place the recall on the June ballot.
Campaign leaders filed nearly 100,000 signatures on Thursday morning at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters in San Jose. They are required to have at least 58,634 valid signatures.
The campaign launched in response to Persky’s sentencing of former Stanford University student Brock Turner: six months in county jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman on campus in 2015.
Campaign chair Michele Dauber, a Stanford law professor and Palo Alto resident, told the Weekly that the campaign was “overwhelmed” by the response from voters who signed the recall petition over the past four months.
The recall campaign spent about $300,000 to $350,000 on the signature-gathering effort, according to spokesperson Becky Warren.
The campaign alleges Persky, in addition to the Turner sentencing, has displayed a pattern of bias against women and defendants of color in several sex-crime cases.
Opponents argue the recall poses a threat to judicial independence and that Persky’s sentencing decisions have followed the letter of the law.
Persky’s lawyer, James McManis of McManis Faulkner, did not immediately return a request for comment. Persky worked last year to stop the recall effort from proceeding by filing legal challenges, including alleging that because he is a state officer, California’s secretary of state rather than the county registrar should oversee the recall and that the replacement for a recalled judge should be appointed by the governor rather than elected. A judge ultimately ruled against Persky and allowed the recall campaign to start gathering signatures.
Dauber said the recall effort has benefited from the national #MeToo movement’s momentum against sexual violence and harassment.
“There are many Americans right now who are calling for the end of the culture of impunity for offenses against women. This goes from Hollywood to Silicon Valley to colleges to high schools to the courts and the criminal justice system,” Dauber said.
The Registrar of Voters now has 30 business days to count and “certify whether the petition is sufficient,” the Registrar said in an announcement.
Under California Elections Code, a random sampling of 5 percent of the signatures will be examined and verified, the Registrar said. If the number of valid signatures is greater than 110 percent of the required 58,634 signatures, the petition will be deemed sufficient for the ballot without additional signature verification. If it has less than 90 percent, the petition is considered insufficient.
If the number of valid signatures is more than 90 percent but less than 110 percent, however, the Registrar must examine and verify all of the signatures submitted. Registrar of Voters Shannon Bushey described this scenario as a “labor-intensive process” that would require additional staff and could stretch into mid-February.
Election officials said they expect to have the results of the random sample verification in 10 to 14 business days.
If verified, the recall would go to the county Board of Supervisors for placement on the June 5 ballot. It would be paired with a contest to decide who would replace Persky if he were recalled.
Only one candidate so far has publicly said she plans to run for Persky’s seat: Cindy Hendrickson, a longtime Santa Clara County prosecutor who currently works on District Attorney Jeff Rosen’s executive team. An online fundraising campaign she launched in October has raised about $5,400 toward a $15,000 goal.
While Hendrickson’s boss publicly criticized Persky’s sentencing in the Turner case, Rosen endorsed the judge last spring.
Ongoing coverage of the recall campaign can be found on the Palo Alto Weekly’s Storify page.
Still wondering why instead of promoting an appeal of Judge Persky’s judgement in the Court of Appeals, Michele Dauber embarked on the judge recall campaign? Should she rather embark on recall campaign of District Attorney who chose not to pursue an appeal of Judge Persky’s decision?
Persky followed the advice of the probation officer. Has anyone asked why the probation officer recommended leniency?
>>”The campaign launched in response to Persky’s now widely decried sentencing of former Stanford University student Brock Turner: six months in county jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman on campus in 2015.”
___Such a campaign is dishonest to people of Santa Clara County in the first place, in that they fail to mention that Judge Persky had also sentenced Brock Turner for 3 years of probation and to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life; They had also failed to mention misconducts by that insincere and dishonest girl ‘Emily Doe’ (like ‘Emily Doe’ was binge-drinking alcohol into oblivion by herself and she had played sleazily in a wild party after drunk by herself; and she is not honest in her description of the incident after getting back to sober, and her victim status is still in question before her testimony could withstand public scrutiny under her real identity);___Where do the ethics and integrity of such a baseless Recall Judge Persky Campaign led by Ms. Michele Dauber stand?
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>>”Campaign leaders filed nearly 100,000 signatures on Thursday morning at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters in San Jose.”
___Such a signature collection becomes nonsense when the likes of Ms. Cindy Hendrickson and Ms. Michele Dauber (two local-thugs i.e., two thuggish local women, yeah, we are
born equal; men can be thugs, so can women) fed people with dishonest / misleading information and also with censorship; No matter how many signatures they had collected, such actions from Ms. Michele Dauber / Cindy Hendrickson are unethical and criminal by itself;
___I am sure those 100,000 who had signed up such a baseless ‘Recall Judge Persky Campaign’ are all misled; Just ask them, if anyone among those 100,000 has the courage to STEP FORWARD and tell us, under his/her real identity, a valid legal reason to support such a baseless Recall? or answer serious questions listed in this public challenge against real Anti-Humanity Crimes in the much heavier Gabriele Scheler’s Stanford Campus Atrocity Case which is handled by the same set of officers from Santa Clara DA’s Office, and which are directly relevant to the fairness, justice and the living safety of people of Santa Clara County? I am sure NO ONE, because they are all MISLED and RADICALIZED while don’t know exactly what they are doing;
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>>”The petition drive was almost certainly aided by the current climate of heightened concern that victims of sexual assault have not been treated seriously …”
___Such a heightented concern is very PHONY because they only advocate women’s rights while ignore men’s rights in sex-related cases; Look at how Judge Persky and that poor youngman Brock Turner had been publicly demonized in a storm of exaggerated / flippant allegations which is made up by a pack of ultra-radical feminism extremists led by the likes of Michele Dauber; and also look at all the false accusations, miscarriage of justice and the retaliatory fascism crimes against an innocent man, in case of me ‘Peter Cao’, in the much heavier Gabriele Scheler’s Stanford Campus Atrocity Case; How could media ignore such real Anti-humanity crimes against men if they really care about victims of sexual assault cases under such a climate?
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___Ms. Michele Dauber, you have already lost all the credibility as a law professor , so has this baseless “Recall Judge Persky’ Campaign led by you, when you advocate violence in Brock Turner-Emily Doe’s Case as evidenced in this December 7, 2017 Mercury News report: “F— Brock Turner’ song raises ruckus”; how shameless of you to come back into the spotlight again!
___Ms. Michele Dauber, Judge Persky is an ethical Judge and a man with integrity; He is very tight in commenting about the case and rarely argued in his own favor in public; While in contrast, you had made up all kinds of ridiculous excuses to mislead the crowd (you are quite an agitator); e.g., you once paranoidly tried to esclade the case as a ‘rape’ out of a still questionable sexual assault casse; Another e.g., you had argued that Judge Persky had the tentency to ‘show leniency to male athletes”, but have you noticed how much leniency Judge Persky had shown to ‘Emily Doe’ in that sentence? Here is a snippet originally to another local thug Ms. Colleen Clary of San Jose when she she claimed there is ‘miscarriage of justice’ in Judge Persky’s sentence;
___Ms. Michele Dauber, have you had the honesty to explain problems in the following paragraph to voters of Santa Clara County when you collect their signatures?
Originally Posted on 12/17/2017 to Ms. Collen Clary of San Jose___Ms. Colleen Clary, Judge Persky had sentenced Brock Turner for jail time, years of probation, and to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, even though he (Brock) had already been publicly demonized; In contrast, Judge Persky didn’t sentence any penalty to that insincere and dishonest girl hiding behind a PRETENTIOUS moniker ‘Emily Doe’, and didn’t even mention misconducts by that girl ‘Emily Doe’ in such a sentence which is based on the testimony coming out of her drunken memory (low credibility); And before her testimony going through public scrutiny under her real identity, Judge Persky had even granted her anonymity to protect her privacy___that’s a very lenient and very generous sentence to ‘Emily Doe’, and also actually very harsh and very tough to that poor youngman Brock Turner since it will influence the rest of his life while he didn’t actually do a life long damage to her; So, Ms. Colleen Clary, what do you mean by ‘miscarriage of justice’ in such a sentence by Judge Persky? Further, if Judge Persky can show leniency to ‘Emily Doe’, what could prohibit him from showing some leniency to that poor youngman Brock Turner?