The San Benito County Registrar of Voters’ office faces accusations that it has incorrectly approved paperwork that did not follow state elections laws governing the recall of elected officials.
Supervisor Ignacio Velazquez filed a lawsuit in San Benito County Superior Court this week challenging a “notice of intention to circulate petition” submitted in June 2025 by a group of residents seeking to recall him from office.
The notice was validated by the county registrar’s office, clearing the way for the proponents to proceed with a successful petition that led elections officials to place the recall question on the upcoming June 2 ballot.
However, Velazquez says the June 2025 notice should not have been validated in the first place, and is asking the court to remove the recall question from the upcoming ballot because the whole process started with faulty paperwork.
Bolstering Velazquez’s case, he said, is the registrar’s office’s acceptance and subsequent rejection—just last month—of another insufficient notice of intention to circulate a petition, this time seeking to recall Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki.
“This proceeding seeks to remove from the June 2026 ballot a recall election that should never have been scheduled: one initiated by a Notice of Intention so deficient that the Registrar himself, applying the same statute eight months later, declared an identically infirm notice void,” says Velazquez’s lawsuit.
A hearing is scheduled for April 10 at the Hollister courthouse for Velazquez’s lawsuit.
On March 24, Chief Deputy Clerk Ana De Castro Maquiz sent an email to Kosmicki stating the elections office had “completed the validation” of a notice of intention submitted by local resident Stacie McGrady.
Under state elections laws, a notice of intention is the first of many steps to recall a local elected official. The notice of intention must include a statement of the reasons for the proposed recall, as well as the printed name, signature and address of each of the proponents of the recall—among other information.
The number of signatures required on the notice varies based on the population of a community—about 60 in San Benito County’s case.
McGrady’s notice included 98 signatures. But Kosmicki said when he began to look at the notice, he could tell that it omitted some of the information required by state law and contacted Registrar Francisco Diaz’s office to challenge the paperwork.
Diaz said his office went through a signature verification process after Kosmicki complained, and determined that only 34 of McGrady’s submitted signatures were valid—not enough to proceed with the circulation of a recall petition.
Diaz added that his office worked with County Counsel Gregory Priamos’s office to examine the signatures. On March 26, elections staff sent McGrady a letter declaring the notice of intention was insufficient.
McGrady now has the option to submit another notice with valid information, or go to the courts to overturn the registrar’s rejection, Diaz said.
McGrady did not return a phone call requesting comment. McGrady is also one of the organizers of the petition that led to the Velazquez recall question on the June 2 ballot.
Kosmicki said the registrar’s process seemed to run afoul of state elections law, as the signatures should have been verified before the notice was validated. “It’s really alarming to me that our elections office did not follow these rules,” Kosmicki said.
Velazquez said the March incident and the allegedly insufficient June 2025 notice suggest a pattern within the elections office.
“We’re seeing over and over again that these things are being ignored,” Velazquez said. “You can’t just ignore the law.”
The notice of intent to recall him only contained eight “fully compliant entries” out of 65 submitted signatures, says the lawsuit.
State elections code 11020 says each name on a notice of intention should include “the printed name, signature, and residence address, including street and number, city, and ZIP code, of each of the proponents of the recall.”
The vast majority of names on the June 2025 notice—which is published on the registrar’s website—do not include ZIP codes. Many do not include the city of residence.
Nevertheless, the elections office declared that 60 of the signatures were valid, allowing the recall proponents to move to the next step of the process—the circulation of a petition for local recall that required significantly more signatures.
The Velazquez recall proponents have also been accused of falsely stating the purpose of the petition when they collected signatures from voters last year. Those accusations are under investigation by the district attorney’s office.
Velazquez’s lawsuit seeks expedited proceedings and judgment due to limited time before the June 2 election.
Diaz said he has sought independent legal counsel since Kosmicki challenged the March notice.
