March 17th, 2010, 12:25 pm • 180 Comments • posted by Martin Wisckol, Politics reporter
Laguna Niguel lawyer Orly Taitz, who’s gained a national following for efforts to prove Barack Obama’s presidency is illegitimate, has qualified to run for California secretary of state, said Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley.
In launching her campaign to be the state’s top elections official, Taitz is alleging that fellow Republican candidate Damon Dunn, a former NFL player living in Irvine, is ineligible to seek the GOP nomination. She says he’s committed voter and election fraud.
Taitz told me this morning that she’s running “to clean up the fraud we all have seen in the 2008 election. It is important to bring legitimacy to elections. And I will be fighting to ensure the California corporations are not overburdened by regulations.”
Taitz has seen the dismissal at least three lawsuits in which she’s attempted to prove that Obama is not a natural-citizen, alleging he may have been born in Kenya and that even if he was born in the United States, having a Kenyan father disqualified him. The native of the USSR, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was sanctioned $20,000 for misconduct by one court, with the fine upheld by an appeals court on Monday.
One of her failed lawsuits asked Secretary of State Debra Bowen to investigate Obama’s qualifications to be president. Taitz has repeatedly criticized Bowen for not verifying Obama status as a natural-born citizen. Bowen, a Democrat, is expected to win reelection against the eventual GOP nominee.
Kelley said that Taitz filed a complaint with his office, “55 or 60 pages” long. Among the allegations was that Dunn was registered as a Democrat within the last 12 months, which would disqualify him to seek the GOP nomination, Kelley said. Candidates must be registered for three months with the party they are running for, and cannot be registered for a different party for 12 months.
Kelley said that Dunn has been registered as a Republican in Orange County since March 17, 2009. That’s just short of the 12-month mark given the March 12 filing deadline, but meets the three month requirement.
Taitz offers evidence that Dunn was registered to vote in Jacksonville, Florida, as a Democrat. Dunn confirmed that he registered as a Democrat there in 1999, but said he left the city the same year and his registration there was subsequently terminated.
Dunn’s candidacy for the top elections job is itself unlikely, as he is a self-proclaimed “recovering non-voter.” He says he never voted before 2009. He said he registered as a Democrat in Jacksonville because his family is Democratic, and he was asked to register when he went to get a driver’s license.
His formal conversion to the GOP came more recently.
“My true philosophy has had a chance to emerge,” he said.
Kelley said he’s forwarded Taitz’s complaint that Dunn is ineligible to District Attorney Tony Rackauckas.
See a copy of the complaint posted on Taitz’s Web site
Taitz told me she is running a grassroots campaign and expects nationwide support.
“A lot of patriots of this country want a person who stands for accountability,” she said.
Both candidates want voters to provide more proof of their eligibility to vote. Taitz wants voters to provide verification of citizenship when they register. Dunn wants voters to provide photo identification when they register to vote and when they show up at the polls.
Like Taitz, Dunn said he’d like to use the office – which registers corporations – to address the state’s loss of jobs. Specifically, he’d use the office to hold exit interviews with businesses that terminated their registration.
“We need some empirical information about why they’re leaving,” he said.
Read the Orange County Register’s story on Dunn’s candidacy.
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