Volunteers to recall District Attorney George Gascon have found 1,560 valid voter signatures that were thrown out by the county of Los Angeles, prompting a lawsuit to speed the review of all disqualified signatures.
Recall campaign workers have found a 39% error rate after reviewing just 2% of the 195,758 invalidated signatures from the failed grassroots campaign to remove Gascon from office, according to the lawsuit.
The campaign needs to show a maximum of 21% of failed signatures are valid to win the recall. The percentage could be lower if the campaign proves to a judge that dirty voter rolls exist, meaning the county has not cleaned out half a million inactive voters as required by a court order following a Judicial Watch lawsuit.
GEORGE GASCON ACCUSED OF PUNISHING VETERAN PROSECUTORS WITH ‘VINDICTIVE DEMOTIONS’ AFTER RECALL BID
“It is stunning,” said former District Attorney Steve Cooley, who helped lead the recall effort. “If this guy survives the recall, shame on the [county] Board of Supervisors.”
Gascon has the backing of the board by a 4-1 margin. Registrar Dean Logan is not elected but rather appointed by the board.
The lawsuit was filed Oct. 18 and names Logan and his office for certifying that the recall failed on Aug. 15 despite an unprecedented signature rejection rate that is not consistent with prior elections. Failure of the bipartisan effort shocked law enforcement, prosecutors, and victims’ rights advocates, prompting a University of California, Berkeley poll that said Gascon should have lost.
The beleaguered Gascon has been blasted by the above groups for policies that have downgraded charges for violent criminals and lessened prison sentences.
Logan’s office made a series of blunders in the signature counting process, which the campaign discovered while going through the county’s voter rolls. Volunteers discovered the discrepancies while looking at each disputed signature and comparing them to records on file at the registrar.
Many of the mistakes were obvious. For example, employees mark petitions with a “VS,” indicating valid signatures, yet volunteers found many of these voters were marked “invalid” in the database. Others were thrown out for being duplicates without counting one of the petitions, while some were disqualified because the person had moved when the registrar was to blame for not updating the correct address, the suit says.
One of the most glaring errors involves invalidating signatures because they were not registered voters when campaign workers were able to find them in the database.
“The complaint against the LA County Registrar of Voters is full of allegations that, if proven to be true, should cause every voter in Los Angeles County grave concern about the integrity of the election process,” said attorney Mark Meuser, a constitutional law expert. “Should these allegations be proven as true in a court of law, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors should immediately fire every senior officer of the Registrar of Voters office.”
The campaign has also been blocked from conducting a speedy review of records, limited to just three days a week with sparse access to computer terminals and refusal of county staff to answer questions or provide printouts of documents. The onerous conditions mean that review will take about 18 months, an unacceptable time frame, the lawsuit says.
“Rejecting valid signatures disenfranchises voters and undermines the people’s constitutional right to recall public officials,” the lawsuit says. “Nothing corrodes democracy more than the public’s distrust in the electoral process. The only way the [recall] committee can determine if the petition was properly rejected is if it has access to the same voter record data and information as the Registrar and is given comparable access to undertake its review.”
Meuser accused the county of using red tape and delay tactics “to prevent the voice of the people from being heard.”
“The people of Los Angeles County do not feel safe because of the pro-criminal policies of George Gascon,” he added.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Logan defended his office in a Sept. 26 letter to the campaign, saying he isn’t to blame for any “roadblocks.”
“The parameters and procedures established for the inspection appropriately recognize reasonable limits to ensure the preservation of the petitions, protect voter data that is not subject to public disclosure, operate within guidelines established to protect public health and safety related to COVID-19, and to allocate public resources in a manner to support the Committee’s inspection while maintaining the Department’s legal obligations to prepare for and administer the Nov. 8, 2022 General Election,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for the registrar said the office did not have a comment.
