Los Angeles County’s disregard for election integrity: Susan Shelley
By SUSAN SHELLEY | |L.A. DAILY NEWS
“We are truly excited about the about the new voting system and want you to be too!”
That was the message from Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl in an email blast to share the news that the most populous county in California, with more than 5.3 million registered voters, is introducing new voting machine technology, abolishing precinct polling places, and throwing the doors open for 11 days of in-person voting, just in time for the March 2020 primary.
As of February 10, the entire state had just under 20 million registered voters, which means one out of every four California voters will be casting a ballot in L.A. County.
For comparison, there are 1.59 million registered voters in Orange County, 1.06 million in Riverside and 963,616 in San Bernardino. San Diego counts 1,747,383 registered voters and there are only 493,455 in San Francisco.
So there’s reason for statewide concern about L.A. County’s “exciting” new voting system. California’s new tourism slogan could be, “What happens in Los Angeles, gets all over everybody.”
And here’s what’s going to happen in Los Angeles.
Instead of local polling places that are open only on Election Day, there will be 1,000 Vote Centers that will be open for 11 days. Registered voters will be able to vote at any Vote Center just by walking in and giving their name and address. They’ll be able to change their address, or their party preference, or their preference for by-mail or in-person voting. They’ll be able to request a new ballot. And they’ll be able to vote the same day that they make any of these changes.
No identification is required.
Here’s the security procedure to make sure people really are who they say they are.
Want to hear it again?
That’s right, there is no security whatsoever to protect against voter impersonation.
L.A. County has spent a lot of years and a lot of money creating its own proprietary voting technology called Voting Systems for All People. It features touch-screen ballot-marking devices that create a printed paper ballot. There’s also a new interactive Sample Ballot that allows voters to make their selections before going to the Vote Center. And there will be new electronic poll books so voters can check in at any Vote Center and make changes to their registration on the spot.
Not to be too cynical about this, if that’s possible, but even if the technology works perfectly, the complete system is so wide-open for fraud that the next person elected governor of California could be Bernie Madoff.
If you’d like to see the new system in action, L.A. County will be conducting a mock election on September 28 and 29 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., at multiple locations. You can find the details at LAVote.net/Mock-Election.
Other states, you may be surprised to hear, are already using Voter ID as a preventive measure against potential election fraud, and the courts have upheld it in many cases.
According to Ballotpedia, as of April 1, 2019, 35 states were enforcing — or about to start enforcing — voter identification requirements. Some require a government-issued photo ID. Some don’t require the photo.
Some states, including Colorado, require identification if voters choose to vote in person, but not if they vote by mail. Hawaii requires an ID, but not a photo ID, to vote. Indiana demands a government-issued photo ID that has the voter’s name and an expiration date. Iowa’s voter ID law took effect on January 1. Gov. Terry Branstad said, “Protecting the integrity of our election system is very important.”
But not in California, Illinois or New York, which do not require any identification to vote, except possibly for a first-time voter at the polls.
By coincidence, or maybe not by coincidence, these three states have some of the highest tax rates in the country. It almost makes you wonder who’s voting for those, and who’s voting for the elected officials who are voting for those.
In California, statewide ballot measures have been used to raise taxes. Often. And in November 2020, that could happen again.
Who’s voting in Los Angeles County? The truth is, we’ll never know.
