Government: County Registrar of Voters finds lack of valid signatures in recall effort

Leader of committee to recall Armendariz calls petition efforts “successful” as a message for her to leave

An estimated 150 people attend a vigil at a candle memorial for 18-year-old Michael Daniel Zuniga-Macias, who was shot and killed during a Halloween party on the property of Gilroy Councilwoman Rebeca Armendariz. Photo courtesy Dori Ann Prado

By Marty Cheek

Rebeca Armendariz

The group intent on recalling Gilroy City Councilmember Rebeca Armendariz did not gather enough valid petition signatures to hold a special election in March.

Julia Saenz, the county’s voter registration election division coordinator, sent Gilroy City Clerk Thai Nam Pham a letter dated Nov. 28 informing him the submitted petition was “found insufficient.” The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters made this determination based on a random statistical sampling of the petition, which found the petition  did not contain the required number of valid signatures.

The Committee to Recall Rebeca Armendariz submitted 6,390 signatures on Oct. 13. This was 173 more than the 6,217 required to be found valid from Gilroy voters. The ROV took a sample size of 500 petition documents and checked the signatures and found 117 (23.2 percent of the sample) of them were not valid.

Of the invalid petitions in the sample, 57 were from people who were not registered, 17 were out of the district, one was signed more than once, one was withdrawn, 26 were registered at a different address, 10 provided no residence address, one had no signature, one was a printed signature, and two had signatures that didn’t match.

Kelly Ramirez, the Gilroy retired teacher who launched the recall effort, described how she and other members of the Committee to Recall Rebeca Armendariz believe the petition effort, despite the ROV’s determination, proved to be a victory because it showed thousands of residents prefer the councilmember would leave her elected office.

Between 50 and 70 people spent several months gathering signatures starting in mid-June, standing in front of supermarkets and other public locations or walking door-to-door at voters’ homes.

“In regard to the petitions that were signed and the number of people who signed it, we still think this is extremely successful,” Ramirez said. “We did what we set out to do. We set out to show Councilmember Armendariz that the community of Gilroy feels that she needs to step down — and we were very successful about that.”

A standalone mail ballot election was estimated by the Registrar of Voters to cost between $497,388 and $808,256.

A standalone vote center and mail ballot election was estimated to cost between $1,243,274 and $2,020,320.

The Registrar of Voters set the date of March 7 for all municipalities in the county to use for a special election and thus split the costs, which would have significantly lowered the cost of the recall special election if it took place.

“As far as I’m concerned, the results don’t mean a thing,” Ramirez said. “It was never our intention to have this special election, which is really the purpose of the ROV verifying to put it to the ballot. That’s costly and it was never our intent to do that.”

Armendariz has not responded to multiple email requests for her comments on the recall effort and the fact the petition lacked enough valid Gilroy voters signature.

The recall effort was a response to her conduct before, during and after the shooting of four young people at a large private party held  at her Las Animas Avenue home Oct. 30, 2021. The gunfire resulted in the immediate death of 18-year-old Michael Daniel Zuniga-Macias. Jesse Sanchez, 19, was made a quadriplegic from the gunfire and died from the injuries May 27.

Gilroy police are conducting an investigation to find the shooter(s).

Armendariz said at the Oct. 3 city council meeting she would not resign. This was in response to a majority of the council voting to request she resign if the recall qualified for a special election. First elected in November 2020, her term ends in 2024.

Ramirez is the person on record as the principal officer of the recall committee and is the only person allowed to review the signatures that were disqualified. She intends to ask the city clerk to do this, emphasizing that she does not think her review will change the results.

“I feel it’s my responsibility to the community to do that,” she said.

She sees the recall process as a triumph for democracy in Gilroy’s governance.

“I would like people to understand this was a grassroots effort by so many community members,” Ramirez said. “It was very successful, and I would like to encourage people to be a part of the solution at a local level. And it does work.”

She also sees the petition efforts as a moral and ethical issue for Gilroy residents.

“This was evidenced that the recall was widely supported regardless of political affiliation or race and proved to be a truly community unifying effort,” she said.