The question of whether to recall Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky for his record in sexual-violence cases will officially go before voters in June.
The Registrar of Voters announced Tuesday that a sufficient number of the 94,539 petition signatures submitted by the recall campaign' earlier this month are valid, qualifying the measure for the June 5 ballot.
The campaign working to unseat Persky alleges he has shown a pattern of bias against women and defendants of color in sex-crime cases. The effort was prompted by Persky's widely decried six-month sentencing of former Stanford University student Brock Turner, who had been convicted for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman on the university campus in 2015.
In a statement, the recall campaign called the signature verification a "monumental moment as it is rare that a judge has ever been placed on a ballot to be recalled in the history of the State of California or nation."
Recall campaign Chair Michele Dauber, a Stanford law professor and Palo Alto resident, recalled what Emily Doe, the anonymous woman in the Brock Turner case, wrote in her victim impact statement: that "when she learned that Judge Persky sentenced Brock Turner (to) only six months in jail, she was 'struck silent.'
"But today the voters of Santa Clara County have spoken loud and clear," Dauber said in a statement.
The recall campaign was required to submit 58,634 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.
A random 5 percent sampling of 4,727 signatures found that 3,389 were valid, the Registrar said. When applied to the total raw signature count, the number of valid signatures comes out to more than 110 percent of the required number. This amount automatically qualified the measure for the ballot without further signature verification.
The Registrar certified the results on Tuesday and will bring the matter before the county Board of Supervisors at its Feb. 6 meeting.
Under Elections Code, the Board of Supervisors must issue an order within 14 days of the meeting for an election to determine whether to recall Persky, the Registrar said. If the Board does not order the election, the Elections Code requires the Registrar of Voters to set the date for holding the election.
The recall measure will be paired with a contest to decide who will replace Persky if he is recalled.
Only one candidate so far has publicly said she plans to run for Persky's seat: Cindy Hendrickson, a longtime Santa Clara County prosecutor who currently works on District Attorney Jeff Rosen's executive team.
Visit the Palo Alto Weekly's Storify page for ongoing coverage of the recall campaign.
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