The Alameda County Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order at a hearing Wednesday morning, instructing the Pacifica Foundation to sequester the ballots of Berkeley-based radio station KPFA’s recall election.
Ballots in the recall election — which began after KPFA members petitioned to recall elected Pacifica treasurer and KPFA board member Tracy Rosenberg — were originally planned to be opened and counted on Aug. 4. However, Rosenberg and her co-plaintiff, a KPFA member from Walnut Creek, filed a complaint with the court on July 31 due to supposed flaws with the recall election.
In response, the court issued a temporary restraining order to hold off counting the ballots and scheduled a full hearing for Sept. 10 regarding Rosenberg’s injunction request which, if granted, would mean the ballots will not be counted.
According to Rosenberg, the election violated the requirements of the foundation’s bylaws and the California Corporations Code by having a record date, or eligibility date, more than 240 days before the election date. The California Corporations Code states that an election’s record date cannot be more than 60 days before the election while the foundation’s bylaws state the date is 45 days or less.
Additionally, the early Nov. 2011 record date for a June 2012 election resulted in issues with ballot distributions. Current KPFA members, like Rosenberg’s co-plaintiff who joined KPFA after Nov. 2011, did not receive a ballot and could not vote while members with memberships ending by June 2012 did get to vote, according to Rosenberg.
“Many other people joined between November and May who should have received ballots but did not. You’re basically defranchising current members to send ballots to former members,” Rosenberg said. “That is, in my opinion, contrary to the law. We are suing on behalf of those people.”
But issues with the November 2011 record date should not have occurred, according to Margy Wilkinson, chair of the KPFA Local Station Board and a member of SaveKPFA, a coalition of KPFA listeners and unpaid and paid staff that works to support the radio station.
“Ballots were mailed out (in) June when they should have been mailed out by Dec. 30 last year and no later,” Wilkinson said. “The people who petitioned for a recall election did everything right. The fact of the matter is that the Pacifica national board dragged out the appeal. That is entirely their responsibility.”
According to Wilkinson, the election’s delay to June 2012 makes it impossible for the election to have a legitimate record date. The Pacifica national board recall procedures state that a recall election’s record date should be the certification date of the recall petition, which is Nov. 2011 for this particular election.
Consequently, it is difficult to hold an election that includes both former members who were supposed to vote in Dec. 2011 and current members, Wilkinson said.
“I believe in the broadest level of democracy. I would like everyone to have a chance to vote,” Wilkinson said. “However, I just don’t see any way that this could be possible.”
According to Rosenberg, holding a recall election has already cost Pacifica about $20,000 to $30,000. She also added that her term will be up soon, so SaveKPFA pursuing another election should the injunction be granted would only unreasonably further costs.
“This recall election is getting insanely expensive,” she said. “As a non-profit foundation, Pacifica can not afford to spend unlimited money on having recall elections. And my term is up in a year and a half anyways.”
Though SaveKPFA member and longtime KPFA listener member Mark Spindler acknowledged the cost of recall elections, he said KPFA members have a right to pursue a recall election when necessary.
“We believe KPFA is going in the wrong direction as the result of mismanagement and poor leadership … of specifically Tracy Rosenberg,” Spindler said. “She needs to be held accountable for what she has done, and this recall election is the vehicle for that.”
Spindler also pointed out that Pacifica has spent much more money in its attempts to stop a recall election.
“The question should be why is Pacifica teaming with anti-union attorneys and law firms and using over $60,000 of donations to try get rid of the union represented workers of KPFA,” he said.
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On August 4, SaveKPFA observers documented the retrieval of recall ballots from a Berkeley PO box this weekend, and their sequestration in a nearby safe deposit box. They report what appears to be a VERY LARGE number of ballots waiting to be counted. SaveKPFA offers a few thoughts on these latest developments:
Rosenberg could have raised her procedural concerns much sooner — perhaps even before ballots were mailed. The suit doesn’t appear to be the action of someone who wants a smooth election process, but rather that of someone seeking maximum delay.Rosenberg filed the suit just before ballots were to be counted, and sought an order to prevent the counting itself (rather than to prevent Pacifica from acting on whatever the count was). This indicates Rosenberg expected to lose the vote count.Any remedy likely to come from her lawsuit — including an entirely new election — is unlikely to produce a different result. So Rosenberg appears to be playing for time.Read more, including a picture of the huge number of ballots being transferred from the PO to bank safe deposit boxes, here: http://www.savekpfa.org/rosenberg-sues-over-recall-ballot-count-delayed
What cracks me up about KPFA is how totally dysfunctional they have been over the years and how eager they are to tell the rest of us how our society should be organized. Sad.
I would like to suggest that the Daily Cal do some investigative reporting – looking into what the truth of this actually is – rather than writing up “he said, she said” news. A place to start would be reading the relevant sections of the Pacifica by-laws.
Sorry, but KPFA really isn’t that important, considering that it’s just a propaganda mouthpiece for a bunch of uber-leftwing 1960′s hippie holdovers. We’re just having a laugh at their expense…
I will stick to KALX.
so cute when liberals get in cat fights with each other. another reason not to donate to bs like kpfa.
The question at issue is the ongoing representation of current KPFA members on the local and national boards. Allowing non-members to vote and preventing current members from voting is clearly not acceptable and that is why the restraining order was granted. Ms. Wilkinson is fully aware of the reasons for the delay: Save-KPFA-affiliated board members objected to Pacifica’s 1st choice of an election supervisor (who was much more experienced than the one who eventually came on board months later) and prevented the appointment. They are directly responsible for the delay and being dishonest about that. Finally, Mr. Spindler is also saying things that are not true. KPFA went through expense reductions in 2010 after running two consecutive annual deficits of more than half a million dollars. They are far from the only non-profit organization that had to make expense reductions over the past 4 years – virtually all have – and to pretend that serious financial problems are political is really misguided and unfortunate. A 3rd consecutive half a million dollar deficit was impossible and any board member or listener advocating for such a thing really would have been in dereliction of their duties.
Tracy Rosenberg
KPFA Delegate and Director, Pacifica Foundation Board of Diectors
[The question at issue is the ongoing representation of current KPFA
members on the local and national boards. Allowing non-members to vote
and preventing current members from voting is clearly not acceptable and
that is why the restraining order was granted.]
Yet Tracy, many of you so-called “progressives” have NO problem with illegal aliens and felons voting in elections, as long as it gets Democrats elected. It’s sort of amusing to see the shoe on the other foot for a change…