SF city attorney slams Sanders’ backers’ voter registration suit

A lawsuit by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders and a group of independent voters against election officials is just a headline-grabbing “political stunt” unsupported by any evidence, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said Tuesday.

The suit “cynically aims to undermine the legitimacy of our election, and to further a political narrative that has zero basis in reality,” said Herrera, whose office represents San Francisco elections Director John Arntz in the case.

The lawsuit accuses election officials of providing independent voters with misleading and confusing information about their right to vote for a partisan presidential candidate in the June 7 primary. The suit seeks to extend Monday’s voter registration deadline to election day.

Herrera said San Francisco provides accurate and complete information to prospective voters, which his legal staff described in detail to the plaintiffs’ lawyer before the suit was filed.

But the lawyer, William Simpich, said San Francisco’s ballot material included varying deadline dates for submitting crucial change-of-registration applications, as well as information that was distributed to some voters and not to others.

“What we’re asking for is uniformity,” both countywide and statewide, Simpich said.

The federal court suit was filed Friday against the state and elections officials in San Francisco and Alameda counties by a group called the Voting Rights Defense Project, along with the American Independent Party and two individual voters. They argued that vote-by-mail application forms posted on both counties’ websites contained incomplete or misleading information about the right to register without a party affiliation, and about the rights of independent voters to request presidential ballots for the Democratic, American Independent or Libertarian parties.

Independent votes are important to Sanders, who is trying to keep alive his challenge to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination and has fared well among nonaligned voters in states that allow their participation. California allows independents to vote in the Democratic, American Independent or Libertarian primaries if they request such a ballot at their polling place, or submit a mailed application by May 31.

To remedy the alleged misinformation, Simpich has asked a federal judge to allow independent voters who haven’t requested a party ballot to cast write-in votes on June 7, or to set aside ballots they’ve already mailed in so they can vote for their chosen candidate. He’s also requested an extension of the state’s voter registration deadline, which expired Monday, to election day.

But election-day registration would be impossible this year, said Neal Kelley, the Orange County voter registrar who is president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials. A new state law will allow Californians to register at county election offices as late as election day in 2018, and county officials are now working to update their registration lists and lack a database that would enable them to verify new applicants on June 7, Kelley said.

Herrera, who supports Clinton for president, said the information San Francisco sends to voters in its ballot pamphlet, and provides on the Department of Elections’ website, informs unaffiliated voters of their right to cast ballots for partisan presidential candidates. He said he believes other counties are equally committed.

The plaintiffs want changes that are “not only impossible, but would wreak havoc on an election that’s already under way,” Herrera said. “This is a political stunt.”

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: egelko