Calif. Assures Citizens Everything's Fine After Losing Track of 118,000 Voters
The state of California held its “jungle” primary elections on Tuesday, in which the top two vote-getters in each race — regardless of party affiliation — move on to the general election in November.
Republican candidates did surprisingly well in the Democrat-dominated state, but that was not the biggest story to emerge from Tuesday’s elections, at least not in the eyes of the mainstream media.
Rather, Politico reported on the fact that at least 118,522 registered voters in Los Angeles County were left off the voter rolls in a shocking oversight that affected at least one-third of all voting precincts in the county.
“We apologize for the inconvenience and concern this has caused,” stated County Clerk Dean Logan on Tuesday evening, according to Politico. “Voters should be assured their vote will be counted.”
The statement urged any and all voters who were told by poll workers that they weren’t included on the voter rolls to request a provisional ballot to cast. That would eventually be added to the final tally once that voter’s pre-existing registration and eligibility had been confirmed.
According to Fox News, the mistake was seized on by former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who had been vying to emerge from the gubernatorial primary as a Democrat alternative to the favorite candidate, Democrat Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsome.
Villaraigosa demanded polls remain open longer than usual because of the registration problem, and, using abbreviations for Logan’s title of Los Angeles registrar-recorder/county clerk, tweeted:
“I’m calling on @LACountyRRCC to keep the polls open longer because of the unprecedented number of voters left off the voter rolls.”
He further called for voters who’d been turned away to come back and cast a provisional ballot.
Unfortunately for Villaraigosa, he appears to have finished the race in fourth place, and Republican John Cox will challenge Newsome in November for the governor’s post.
As for Villaraigosa’s request that turned-away voters return to their polling location to cast a provisional ballot, that was unlikely to occur in large enough numbers to have any real effect on the outcome of the race.
“While it is true that voters whose names are not on their precinct’s voter roll can and must obtain that provisional ballot to cast their vote, it is an inevitability that many will have seen their names not on the voter roll and be turned off from voting entirely,” stated Mark Gonzalez, chairman of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party.
“We will work closely with Dean Logan and the County Registrar to ensure this does not happen again and that every vote is counted,” Gonzalez added.
According to KNBC, Villaraigosa proceeded to call for voting centers in the county to remain open and accepting of ballots through Friday, June 8, in order to accommodate any registered voters who were unable to vote because of the mistake that excluded them from the rolls.
That huge mistake was blamed on a “random issue with the print job that ran the paper rosters” by Logan, but he insisted the “glitch” wouldn’t prevent anybody from voting and was unlikely to occur again.
This “glitch” was a pretty significant error that likely led to eligible and registered voters being unable to cast a ballot while opening the door to potential voter fraud with a flood of provisional ballots that may or may not be closely checked afterwards.
This from a state controlled by a political party that insists voter integrity and fraud is not an issue to be concerned about, and one that demands that government officials be placed wholly in charge of major portions of peoples’ lives, such as their health care.
No thanks, California Democrats. Get back to us when you can smoothly run a local election.
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