Judge Orders Nevada County to Pay over $85,000 after County Illegally Withheld Election Records
NEVADA CITY - A Nevada County Superior Court judge ordered Nevada County to pay more than $85,000 in legal fees and costs to Amy Young after winning a major case against Nevada County which will ripple through election offices statewide.
On June 21, 2023, after 10 months of litigation, the Honorable S. Robert Tice-Raskin ordered the Nevada County Election office to release to the public a tranche of public records related to the November 2020 General Election, which Nevada County had been illegally refusing to disclose for nearly two years despite analogous records from San Francisco’s election office being provided to the general public and identical records being provided by Stanislaus County.
Young Warned the Board of Supervisors Prior to Filing her Lawsuit but the Board Ignored her Warning
Following the hearing on September 29, 2023, Amy Young released the following statement:
These costs could have all been avoided if the Board of Supervisors and county counsel had taken this issue more seriously when I addressed them in public comment on June 14, 2022 (starting at timestamp 1:24:45). In my comment, I told them that I had been denied access to election records including audit logs, tabulator tapes, and cast vote records – all records which I obtained as a result of the petition for writ of mandate. I am grateful to my attorneys for stepping up to help bring justice and transparency to this situation. I hope that getting election records won’t be such a struggle in the future.
Our elections are fundamental to our republic and people should not have to have any special qualifications to see every detail of the process, even if those details are electronic in nature. Truly, most of our elections today are processed in a digital format on computerized voting systems, from the time our ballots are received to when the results are generated – with physical, human interaction minimized. If there are going to be computers used for counting our votes, then what computers do is just as critical for observers to view as the more traditionally observed elements of an election.
In the summer of 2021 pursuant to the California Public Records Act, Amy Young requested from Gregory Diaz and Natalie Adona copies of public records relating to the 2020 General Election in the custody and control of the county election office. After over a year of refusals and various statements that the County did not possess the records and with the destruction of the requested records pending on September 3, 2022, Young, through her attorneys Susan Kay McGuire and Barry W. Pruett, filed an emergency petition with the Nevada County Superior Court on August 17, 2022. Young asked the Court to order the County to preserve the requested records and, at the conclusion of the litigation, to release the public records and to award Young her attorney fees. On August 18, 2022, the Honorable S. Robert Tice-Raskin ordered the County to preserve the requested records until the litigation could be completed. On June 21, 2023, the Court ordered the release of a tranche of public records related to the November 2020 General Election, which Nevada County had been illegally refusing to provide to the public. Last week, the Court determined that Young was the prevailing party in the litigation and, as such, is entitled to her attorney fees and costs.
Nevada County Lacks Transparency
At the conclusion of the litigation with the County, one of Young’s attorneys, Susan K. McGuire, released the following statement:
The California Legislature enacted laws emphasizing that access to information concerning the conduct of the people's business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state. With respect to election records, our local elected Nevada County Registrar of Voters (“ROV”) denied my client, Ms. Young, this fundamental access to numerous election records that other ROVs freely provided to the public, even putting them online. The entire process will have taken 14 months. As the prevailing party in this litigation, my client is entitled to her attorney fees and costs and given the complexity of the case and the strenuous opposition by the County, the Court has awarded the sum of over $85,000 in fees and costs. Unfortunately, this substantial burden will ultimately be borne by the taxpayers, which in my opinion could have been totally avoided by your elected and appointed County government officials, who are immune from liability.
The elected ROV, Natalie Adona, as well as your current Board of Supervisors (“BOS”) chose to proceed with defending against the Petition, with the advice of the BOS appointed County Counsel, Katherine “Kit” Elliott. Both our elected ROV Adona and elected BOS as well as County Counsel Elliott failed in their obligations to secure the rights of the people of Nevada County according to their Constitutional oaths of office. The People have paid the salaries as well as the fees on both sides of the argument in this avoidable situation and our government officials will only be held accountable upon demand by the People and taxpayers.
Ms. Young represents one of the People who took her civic duty seriously, ignoring gossip, media and innuendo and doing her research. I am wholeheartedly grateful for her thoroughness and doggedness as a responsible citizen, willing to make and take enormous efforts to benefit our entire community, state and ultimately country. I also have appreciated working with Attorney Barry Pruett, who was indispensable in fully and adequately presenting this case to the Court.
At this time, the election records from the 2020 General Election, which Ms. Young finally received, are being analyzed by data engineers and others in order to determine the level of accuracy of our local elections.
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Editor’s Note: Barry Pruett is a member of Sierra Thread.