Nevada County Superior Court Continues Hearing on Whether County Illegally Withheld Public Records
The Nevada County Superior Court was set to hear the matter of Young v. Nevada County Registrar (Nevada County Case No. CU0000261) on Friday, April 28, 2023, but the Court continued the hearing until June while ordering the County to produce unredacted versions of the records which were previously submitted by the County in a highly redacted form.
Beginning in December of 2021, Amy Young requested Nevada County’s election records related to the 2020 General Election. After 18 months of unfulfilled requests, Young filed a petition for writ of mandate on August 17, 2022. If the petition is granted by the Nevada County Superior Court, the Elections Office will be ordered to produce the records. The Elections Office contends that the election records requested by Young are exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Act. In contrast, comparable election documents for San Francisco County have been transparently available online for the past seven elections.
Prior to requesting that the Nevada County Superior Court order the disclosures, Young made requests to the Elections Office to obtain digital ballot images, audit logs, tabulator tapes, and cast vote records. Despite San Francisco County having such records available online for years, the Nevada County election office has refused to disclose the requested public records with the exception of the cast vote records which the County only produced after Young filed her petition for writ of mandate.
On February 15, 2023 and after litigation of the matter for over five months, the Court ordered the County to “provide a representative sample of an actual audit log during the relevant time period for the matter.”
The Court further allowed the County to “redact any portion thereof with a prominent indication of the redaction and insert a generic description of the redacted data if [the County] believes there is a legal basis for non-disclosure of the information at this time.” Natalie Adona, the current registrar of voters for Nevada County, submitted to the Court the first page of an audit log for the November 2020 election, fully redacted, and omitted an entire column of data without explanation to the Court about the omission.
In response, Young submitted a complete and unredacted audit log to the Court from Stanislaus County which uses the very same voting system as Nevada County.
In response and on April 28, 2023, the Court ordered Adona to submit, under seal, a complete and unredacted audit log from the November 2020 election no later than May 5, 2023.
Hearing on this matter is currently set for June 16, 2023, at 1:00pm in Dept. 6 of the Nevada County Superior Court.
Barry Pruett is one of the attorneys for Young in this case.
