Santa Clara County Grand Jury
• 2023-2024
• Agency Response
Response to:
Gavilan Joint Community College District
If You Only Read the Ballot, You're Being Duped*
⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Findings and Recommendations 1 findings
F1
Page 2
"The Civil Grand Jury finds that in the current environment, which is unregulated at the local level, it is easy for the author of a ballot measure question to write the question in a way that is confusing or misleading to voters." Response to Finding 1: The District disagrees with Finding 1. The content of ballot measures is regulated by detailed requirements contained in the Education Code and the Elections Code. The District works closely with competent bond counsel to prepare ballot language which satisfies all applicable requirements, fairly summarizes the goals of the District within the 75-word limit, and is not misleading to voters.
Related Recommendations (4)
R1b
Page 2
"Governing entities" within Santa Clara County should voluntarily submit their ballot questions to the County Counsel for review prior to submission to the Registrar of Voters, unless and until Recommendation 1d is implemented." WILL NOT BE IMPLEMENTED. The District disagrees that there is a need to submit ballot measures to the Santa Clara Counsel for review prior to submission to the Registrar of Voters because the District relies on competent bond counsel to draft and review ballot measure language for legal sufficiency.
R1c
Page 2
"Governing entities" within Santa Clara County should, by March 31, 2023, adopt their own resolution or ordinance to require submission of their ballot questions to the County Counsel for review prior to submission to the Registrar of Voters, unless and until Recommendations 1d and 1e are implemented." WILL NOT BE IMPLEMENTED. The District will continue to rely of the advice of competent bond counsel to draft and review ballot measure language for legal sufficiency.
R1d
Page 2
" WILL NOT BE IMPLEMENTED. The District does not agree with the need for a "Good Governance in Ballots Commission" as described in the Grand Jury Report. Current law properly places responsibility for the preparation of lawful ballot materials on the public entity seeking to place such measure on the ballot. The District expects to continue to work with competent bond counsel to draft, review and approve all such measures prior to District Governing Board approval and submission to the voters.
R1e
Page 2
"Governing entities" within Santa Clara County should submit their ballot questions for review by the Good Governance in Ballots Commission pursuant to
* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.