Suit filed on behalf of Obama birthplace lawyer

May 12th, 2010, 4:11 pm
by Martin Wisckol, Politics reporter

Orly Taitz
A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the candidacy of Laguna Niguel attorney Orly Taitz, a secretary of state hopeful who has filed several unsuccessful lawsuit attempting to have President Barack Obama removed from office. Taitz says Obama is not a natural-born citizen and so is ineligible to serve as commander in chief.

The suit alleges that her opponent for the GOP nomination to the state’s top elections job, Irvine’s Damon Dunn, is ineligible to run. It also names Secretary of State Debra Bowen and Attorney General Jerry Brown as defendants, alleging that they have not fulfilled their responsibilities in allowing Dunn to run.

The suit was filed Tuesday in Sacramento Superior Court by Pamela Barnett, a Taitz supporter and a plaintiff on at least one of the Obama lawsuits filed by Taitz.

Damon Dunn
Taitz previously filed a complaint with Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley.

Taitz alleged that Dunn been registered as a Democrat within the last 12 months, which would disqualify him to seek the GOP nomination, Kelley said. Candidates must be registered for three months with the party they are running for, and cannot be registered for a different party for 12 months.

Kelley said that Dunn has been registered as a Republican in Orange County since March 17, 2009. That’s just short of the 12-month mark given the March 12 filing deadline, but meets the three-month requirement.

Taitz offered evidence that Dunn was registered to vote in Jacksonville, Florida, as a Democrat. Dunn has confirmed that he registered as a Democrat there in 1999, but said he left the city the same year and his registration there was subsequently terminated.

In her lawsuit, Barnett provides evidence that Dunn did not disclose his previous registration as a Democrat in the space provided when he registered to vote in Orange County.

Barnett also provides a letter from the Jacksonville elections director, noting that Dunn had called on July 10, 2009 to ask that his registration record be removed from the database. The director, Jean Marie Arkins, said that her lawyers said that it could not be deleted. In the letter, Arkins also called his voter registration record “ineligibleâ€