Breaking: Ventura Candidate Sues to Restore Citizen Right to Run for County Office

Press Release Jan 10th, 2018

Court battle to restore citizens right to run for the public office of elected County Sheriff.

The County of Ventura, at the expense of the taxpayers, has filed it’s reply to our brief, and we have filed our response. The case is now fully briefed.

The County, chose to not even attempt to rebut our argument that the CA Legislature has no authority to impose a ‘ballot requirement” over what is specified in our CA Constitution. The CA Constitution is quite clear in “Article 1 Section 7(b) A citizen or class of citizens may not be granted privileges or immunities not granted on the same terms to all citizens.” The CA Constitution calls for the ‘election of county sheriffs’. There are no ‘qualifications’ as to who may run as all adult citizens have the right to run for all public offices.

The County failed to even attempt to rebut our citing of three different cases that confirm that it is the right of the citizens to run for public office.

The County refused to even attempt to rebut our citing of Baca v. Los Angeles that confirmed that not even a  ballot initiative can impose a requirement on the elected office of County Sheriff.  

 The County refused to attempt to rebut our citing of the Colorado case that an elected Sheriff may not be ‘required” to be ‘certified” in way other than to be elected to be the County Sheriff and receive the compensation for that office.

 The County tries to argue that a case filed by a presumptive write-in candidate, who acted as his own attorney, who argued a vague right to have his votes be counted as a ’free speech issue”. The County’s only argument , that they make over and over… is that the County Clerk, Mark Lunn, has a legal responsibility to carry out the law. We do not disagree, we only argue that the ‘law” is unconstitutional.  We now wait on a trial date: Without wanting to seem overconfident, we are however extremely confident that we will prevail. No doubt the County will appeal to the State Supreme Court. We will prevail, the County just wishes to continue to deny the citizens their right to run fro ALL public offices and vote for the candidates of THEIR choice. The County BofS seems most willing to spend ALL of our tax dollars to pursue this.

 We expect that this ruling , s the law was Statewide, will result in the Court finding that ALL County Sheriff elections results as invalid. Expect 58 statewide County Sheriff elections with public citizens on the ballot!

 For more details refer to previous press releases, of contact me.

In Liberty,

Bruce Boyer candidate for Ventura County Sheriff

BruceBoyerforSheriff@Gmail.com

(805) 422-3005; (805) 339-9202

BruceforSheriff.org