California election postponed

A US appeals court today postponed California’s October 7 election, ruling that the poll cannot proceed because some votes would be cast using outdated punch-card ballot machines.

Californians were scheduled to go to the polls to decide whether to remove Governor Gray Davis from office. The two-part ballot was to ask first whether Davis should be recalled, and then would ask voters to chose from 135 candidates vying to replace him.

The court withheld ordering the immediate implementation of its decision, allowing a week for appeals to the US Supreme Court.

Ted Costa, head of the Sacramento-based Peoples’ Advocate, one of the groups that pushed for the recall, said an appeal was certain.

“Give us 24 hours. We’ll get something off to the Supreme Court,” he said.

In what was the last of about a dozen legal challenges to the attempt to unseat Davis, the three-judge panel said it was not acceptable that six counties would be using punch-card ballots, the type that sparked the “hanging chads” litigation in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.

The judges agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union that the voting machines were prone to error and that Davis’s fate could be decided later. By that time, the counties have promised to replace their punch-card machines under a court order in separate litigation.

“In sum, in assessing the public interest, the balance falls heavily in favour of postponing the election for a few months,” the court said.

The counties involved include the state’s most populous region, Los Angeles, in addition to Mendocino, Sacramento, San Diego, Santa Clara and Solano. They represented 44% of the state’s registered voters during the 2000 election.

It was not immediately clear how the decision would affect the campaign in California’s first voter-driven election to unseat its governor.

Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to stand for election, when the poll goes ahead.