Lack of Transparency in LA Elections — The 1% Manual Tally & White Vans?
This article contains on the ground analysis and experience from the following dates: Nov. 6, 2020 thru Nov. 8, 2020
For those who may not know, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (LARRCC) is required to perform a 1% Manual Tally (OPMT) on both Ballot Marking Device (BMD) Ballots and Vote-By-Mail (VBM) ballots according to California Election Code 15360.
To broadly outline it, the OPMT consists of election staff that hand count races from the ballots of a few batches and compare that manual tally to the machine generated tally. You might be asking why verification only uses 1% of the ballots, I’ve made contact with Media Correspondent Michael Sanchez via phone and email and am awaiting the reasoning behind why it is only 1% as opposed to a higher percentage; though it appears that LA County is just following California Code. The only publicly accessible LA COUNTY document I could find regarding the OPMT is from 2008; available also is the CALIFORNIA CODE but this is more broad and the specifics vary by each county.
On Saturday Nov. 7, 2020, I visited the LARRCC office in Norwalk, CA to observe the OPMT that was originally scheduled to take place Thursday Nov. 5 at 10:15am. It was delayed to Nov. 6 at 8am then later to 2pm that day and finally delayed to the 7th with staff citing they were “waiting on sheets to arrive from Downey (the tally center)” and they were “not ready yet.” I reached out to Sanchez about the delay and am awaiting a response.
Two candidates, Angelica Dueñas Congress CA-29 & Maria Estrada State Assembly 63rd District, had also arrived in Norwalk at 8am Nov. 7 to observe the OPMT. To our shock, the LARRCC told us the OPMT was not ready. The video below shows Dueñas’ & Estrada’s statements that day.
The LARRCC staff had told us that they were “setting up” and did not give a time as to when they would be ready. I had been clued in that the setup is important to watch so I asked the staff at the front desk if I could watch the setup and was told to wait outside while they contacted one of the election officials Elva R. Gomez.
While I was waiting outside, a white van pictured in Figure 3 had rolled up to the front of the LARRCC office. One of the two drivers from the white van walked up to speak to the front desk and I overheard him say “We’re here to pick up some ballots for Pomona.”
For those unfamiliar, Pomona is the city where the “Vote By Mail Operation” is located. You can see video I took for The Convo Couch with my partner Craig “Pasta” Jardula of the inside of the Vote By Mail processing center HERE
I immediately thought that it was strange that they were picking up ballots because in the March 3, 2020 primary, The Convo Couch had found out that VBM ballots are not sent directly to Norwalk but rather are sent to an ambiguous PO BOX and then delivered via some type of vehicle to wherever the VBM Processing is taking place (During the March 3, 2020 Primaries, the Vote By Mail processing was located within the Norwalk office and is now located in Pomona for spacing/COVID reasons).
The driver left the front desk, and I could see from the hallway that the van was pulled around to the back of the LARRCC.
At that time, I was being let into the building and then led up to the OPMT room on the 5th floor, where 12 staff were preparing the manual tally sheets to be hand marked. They would start the manual tally for the BMD Ballots once they were done preparing the manual tally sheets.
I was told by Gomez that they probably wouldn’t be ready to perform the OPMT until Monday. I later found out that the OPMT started that same day after I had left. Candidate Angelica Dueñas notified me that she was let in to watch the OPMT at 11:15AM on Nov. 7, 2020 and they had already begun the process…
After asking a few questions on the process of the OPMT, I asked to see the other two rooms where the OPMT for the VBM ballots would be taking place. These two rooms had 12 staff each just sitting and waiting. I asked Gomez why they were just sitting and not organizing the sheets like the first room. She said that yesterday they “had problems with the printer,” and they were “not able to print out the sheets” for them to work on. I also asked if the staff performing the OPMT are permanent staff and was notified that they were “temporary employees.” Why is the LARRCC using public money to hire employees to sit at standby for a state mandated certification process that had been delayed several times before that day?
After the tour of the OPMT rooms, I was again notified by Gomez that the OPMT probably wouldn’t occur that day and that Monday was the best bet. I asked about Sunday and was told I could also try on Sunday.
As I was being escorted out of the OPMT rooms and into the lobby, I saw the white van being loaded up with white boxes and asked Gomez, “Do you know anything about those white vans?” To which she shook her head “No” and said, “Sometimes they pick up and transfer office materials.”
I left Norwalk and decided to go to the Pomona facility to see if I could possibly catch up to the white van shown in Figure 3 before they arrived at the VBM Processing facility to verify their destination and verify if ballots were being taken into the facility.
When I arrived at the facility pictured in Figure 4, I was checking in with staff and noticed the same van pull up and the two workers unload the van. I witnessed multiple white boxes being unloaded as well as USPS envelope packs (and this can be seen in the video in Figure 3).
I asked the head election official there if they were still processing Vote by Mail Ballots to which he said “We are only doing a couple operations to get these last VBM ballots” out. I also asked if there’s any reason for why ballots would be coming to Pomona from the LARRCC, to which he ambiguously cited “drop off boxes.” He then asked what operations I would like to see; I notified him that he looked busy, so I just asked to get an overview picture/shot of the facility for an update.
I had many questions and the latest Press Release at the time of this writing by the LARRCC answers a few of them. The cut-off date according to the press release is 17 days after Nov. 3 and they would be accepting VBM ballots as long as they were postmarked before or on Nov. 3. The same goes with the drop off boxes as long as they are “deposited by voters on or before Nov. 3. They are..valid and will be processed and counted.” Transparency in our elections is something that should be commonplace and information easily accessible; and if it is not, should be demanded by the people to ensure our democracy is still functioning as it was set out by our founding fathers.
So I went back to the LARRCC the next day Sunday Nov. 8, 2020 at 8am. Staffer Elva Gomez was once again the staffer who I was greeted with and allowed me into the OPMT room. After three days of attempts, I would finally be able to see the OPMT process in action. Here’s a brief a summary of how the process goes:
- Manual tally sheets are organized from a big printout pile of the sheets.
- There are three workers at a table. One reads out the ballot, the other two mark on their respective tally sheets (which are a copy of the same race)
- They check their numbers with the Machine Generated Tally report
- They repeat this process until the ballot box is done
- At the end we are notified how “off” the Machine Generated Tally was from the Manual Tally
That sounds great! Except, the machine generated Tally report was not ready.
Candidate Angelica Dueñas verified to me that when she was escorted to see the OPMT, Gomez confirmed that the machine generated Tally report was not ready.
So why was the 1% manual hand count moving forward when the machine generated Tally report was not ready? This could lead to major fraud by corrupt players if the OPMT finishes and then is compared to a freshly printed & doctored machine generated Tally report. Which is what Dueñas reiterates below:
Not to mention the fact that the OPMT was scheduled to start on Nov. 5th and had been delayed two days to Nov. 7 and with staff advising those who were there on the 7th to come back on Monday the 9th…The answers to these questions remain murky. The ambiguity surrounding the late start, the fact that a pivotal piece of the 1% Manual Tally is MISSING from the public’s viewing and publicly paid election officials avoiding the camera puts into question the “fair, accessible and transparent manner” that the LARRCC boasts they have. The ambiguity surrounding a state mandated certification process does the public no favors in a time of outrageous claims of voter fraud and concerning claims of election fraud.
The interview shown above was shortly after I had gotten kicked out of the LARRCC Norwalk office for taking a picture of the 1% Manual Tally room:
I was not allowed back inside the Norwalk building for the rest of the day but was able to ask Gomez a pivotal question before my departure of the Norwalk office. I asked Gomez, “Do any VBM ballots come to this Norwalk Office?” To which she answered “No.” I then asked if it’s possible that the only VBM ballots that come to Norwalk are for the OPMT, to which she replied “Yes.” The answers to these questions solidifies my suspicions of the Nov. 7 white van mentioned previously.
I stuck around to see if any other white vans like from the previous day would show up, and lo and behold, we documented LARRCC staff loading a white van in the back of the Norwalk office with white boxes that usual contain ballots. So I approached them as seen below and the worker would not respond to my questions. Am I doing something wrong wondering what type of ballots those are? How am I supposed to contact an official via email and ask them specifically about a van I saw being loaded up with ballots? If this is part of a process why isn’t this process and ALL PROCESSES outlined somewhere?
I took a guess that the van would head down the road to the Downey facility — where the scanning and tabulation of the ballots takes place — so we drove over to the Downey facility and confirmed that it was the same van with the same white boxes. The van was parked in a usually full but empty lot at the Downey facility.
A staffer from the facility came out with a cart and quickly loaded up the cart with the white boxes and rushed inside before I could approach and inquire about the boxes. Security met with me and I asked to view the Tally operation located in that building. He went back inside and called someone from the LARRCC then came back out to let me know that “There is nobody working in that operation right now.” So I wasn’t able to see the tally operation. But who was the worker carting up the white boxes?
From my experience over those 3 days from Nov. 6 — Nov. 8, there had been a huge lack of transparency with few questions being answered. I documented my experience for all to see and have provided evidence for all of it. The LARRCC needs to be more transparent and people need to be aware that the person in charge who is the decision maker for how transparent the election system in Los Angeles is, is Dean Logan; and above Logan, Secretary of State Alex Padilla who certifies election systems and results.
Logan was hired in 2008 and has over “25 years of experience in elections administration, records management, and public service” and was hired to manage the largest county — Los Angeles — in America which is located within the 5th largest Economy in the world — California. The LA Board of Supervisors made the decision to hire Logan — as it is not a publicly held office — despite his resignation in King County, Washington citing a “‘toxic environment’ surrounding the elections operation” and despite Logan’s mishaps in the 2004 Governor race in King County where there were “162 misplaced absentee ballots found in a warehouse…rais[ing] the number of ballots in question to 735.” Not to mention the fact that later on more mistakes with that race were revealed where Logan said in a questioning under oath that “more than 200 ballots were set aside for more research but were never dealt with.”
Again I reiterate, why was Dean Logan who has a history of mistakes and issues in King County Washington and had issues during the March 3, 2020 Primaries here in LA County (there is currently a lawsuit alleging election fraud) be hired to hold office as the head election official in Los Angeles County, the largest county in the United States located within the 5th largest economy in the world in CA? There was no transparency in King County until questions were raised by the public and by the will of people. There is no transparency NOW in Los Angeles County. Election integrity is a nonpartisan issue and our right to vote is guaranteed in the Constitution & the Bill of Rights. Questions are being dodged and the public needs to see for themselves what is happening to their vote.
Written & Documented by Jonathan Mayorca of The Convo Couch & True Rebel Network
