> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.mendolocal.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Judge Denies Petition to Strike Hart From the District 3 Ballot - URL: https://www.mendolocal.news/judge-denies-petition-to-strike-hart-from-the-district-3-ballot/ - Published: 2026-08-20T15:00:10.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-20T16:30:32.000Z - Description: Court finds Hart established his domicile in the district before the filing deadline; Romero said he's disappointed but will continue to be active in politics. - Author: Elise Cox - Tags: Willits, Covelo, Laytonville, Elections # A Mendocino County Superior Court judge has denied Clay Romero's petition to remove Eric Hart from the November ballot for 3rd District supervisor, ruling from the bench that Hart proved he had moved his legal home into the district well before the filing deadline. "The court looked at every bit of evidence and rendered a decision," Hart said in an interview after the hearing. He added that he had wanted Romero's allegations to be reviewed by the court, and that he is grateful for judge's ruling. The ruling leaves Hart on the Nov. 3 ballot alongside Buffey Wright Bourassa, the two candidates who advanced from the June primary. Romero, who finished third, had asked the court to strike Hart and install him in Hart's place, arguing Hart's true domicile when he filed his nomination papers was a home in the 4th District. Judge Ann Moorman said she would put the decision in writing and told Romero he could seek review in the Court of Appeal. Romero told *MendoLocal.News* he was disappointed with the outcome, but will continue to remain active in politics. The dispute turns on two adjoining properties Hart and his wife occupy on a hillside outside Willits. The couple own a parcel on Northview Drive, which the 2021 redistricting placed in the 4th District, and rent an adjacent home on Williams Ranch Road, in the 3rd District, under a lease with an option to buy. Hart registered to vote at the Williams Ranch Road address in November 2025\. Romero's petition, filed July 24 under Elections Code section 13314, contended that Hart never genuinely changed his domicile and that his registration in the district was a "legal fiction." Moorman opened the hearing by narrowing the case. To win a writ of mandate under section 13314, she said, Romero had to show both that an error violated the Elections Code or the Constitution and that a court order would not substantially interfere with the conduct of the election. She dismissed the Registrar of Voters, Katrina Bartolomie, as a target of the writ, finding her office had done what the law requires — verify that the address on a candidate's papers is in the district and that the candidate is registered there. The registrar had no duty to investigate whether Hart actually lived at the domicile he declared under penalty of perjury, the judge said. On the central question, Moorman explained, the law recognizes a single domicile that continues until a person establishes a new one through both an actual move and the intent to remain. Because Romero had shown Hart was previously domiciled at the Northview Drive property, Moorman said, the burden shifted to Hart to prove he had changed it in time. Before taking testimony, Moorman ruled on written objections Hart's attorney, Christopher Neary, had filed to Romero's sworn declaration, sustaining most of them. She set aside statements Romero attributed to unnamed people — including a delivery driver — whom Romero said wished to remain anonymous, ruling the court could not consider out-of-court statements from unidentified people. She excluded Romero's assertion that an unreturned mail ballot showed Hart was "not being present enough" to receive it, calling it speculation, and also set aside a claim built on the absence of family-court records. Moorman questioned Romero most sharply about a single assertion. His petition had stated that Hart's driver's license listed the Northview address. Hart's attorney had filed a supplemental memorandum pointing out that the law makes driver's-license information confidential. "You can't just go in and get it," Moorman said, and she asked Romero directly how he had reached that conclusion. Romero, representing himself, conceded it was "a combination of oversight and clerical error." He said he did not in fact have Hart's license information, and explained that he had put it in his declaration as a "potential source of identifying information" he thought law enforcement could later verify. He asked to strike it. Moorman allowed the correction but warned him that a party who submits a sworn declaration and later learns it contains inaccurate information must notify the court, or risk sanctions, including having the entire declaration thrown out. "That is not an acceptable practice," she told him. Called to the stand, Hart traced the couple's ties to the two properties back more than a decade. He testified that he had met one of the Williams Ranch Road home's owners in Oakland 15 to 20 years earlier, and that he and his wife visited and stayed at that home over the years before deciding to move north. It was those friends, he said, who told the couple that the adjoining parcel on Northview Drive had come up for sale. Having already talked about finding a place in the area, the couple bought the Northview property and moved from Oakland to Mendocino County in 2019\. Years later, after his friends left Mendocino, they agreed to rent the Williams Ranch Road house to Hart and his wife with an option to buy. Hart testified that he signed the Williams Ranch Road lease in October 2025, slept there within a few days, and moved furniture and clothing over the following days. He described two reasons for the move: he wanted a home with a view and water, which the Northview house lacked. The couple also wanted to separate their work and home lives. The couple now use the Northview house as an office and guest space, he said. He testified renewed his driver's license when it came up on his birthday in June and that he registered to vote at Williams Ranch Road the day after the November 2025 election. Asked where he sleeps, cooks, and returns after trips, Hart answered each time: Williams Ranch Road. Romero, who also testified, claimed that county records showed a homeowner's exemption on the Northview property as of early June. While Hart was not asked to address the exemption during the hearing, he later told *MendoLocal.News* that the exemption is in his wife's name and when they realized it was still in place on the Northview property, they removed it. In denying Romero's petition, Moorman said Hart had met his burden with testimony the court found "believable and credible" that he resides on Williams Ranch Road and intends to remain there. She told Romero she was not critical of the challenge — as an elector Romero was entitled to file it. However, she said the evidence established Hart's domicile in the district before the eligibility date.