A new activist group, Patriot Force, is contacting voters in Orange County to talk about election integrity, making the case that fraud is rampant in local elections.
The volunteers for that group make several claims that, they say, support their argument. Here’s a breakdown of those claims.
Claim: Was Biden in 2020 more popular than Obama in 2012? If not, how did Biden get 45% more votes?
Facts: Yes, Biden was more popular with Orange County voters in 2020 than Obama was in 2012. While Obama received 45.6% of the local vote that year, Biden got 53.5% of the local vote in 2020. There also were nearly 100,000 more registered voters in Orange County in 2020 than eight years earlier, with new registration tipping solidly toward Democrats over the past decade. Plus, voter turnout in Orange County was much higher in 2020, at 87.3% vs. 67.3% in 2012. That adds up to a 45% jump in O.C. votes for Biden in 2020 vs. Obama in 2012.
Claim: We have found over 90,000 ineligible voters on the rolls in Orange County.
Facts: This data was at the heart of a 2021 lawsuit filed by a conservative election watchdog group and 10 failed GOP congressional candidates against a slew of state and county elections officials, including Orange County Registrar Neal Kelley, that echoed false allegations Trump made about the validity of the 2020 election. In June, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, saying there was no evidence of their claims.
The data related to this claim included long expired registrations, old data, wrong data and other problems, Kelley said, with no credible sources and no examples sent to his office for review. If anyone has names of voters on the rolls who they believe are ineligible or there in error, they are urged to contact the Registrar’s office, which will review each case. Patriot Group has never provided Kelley’s office with any such examples and didn’t provide any to the Register.
Claim: There were 123 affidavits submitted in late 2021 to O.C. Sheriff Don Barnes against Registrar Neal Kelley. Shortly after, Kelley announced his retirement.
Facts: “These ‘affidavits’ were served on almost every registrar in the state and claim incorrect ballots were used for the November 2020 election,” Kelley said.
This one gets in the weeds. But, as with many of these examples, that confusions seems to be objective, with some groups latching on to an obscure law to claim, erroneously, that it proves evidence of malfeasance with California elections both in 2020 and going back more than 20 years.
Under state election code from 1994, counties are supposed to print these directions for voters on ballots for presidential elections: “To vote for all of the electors of a party, mark the voting target next to the names of the presidential and vice presidential candidates of that party. A mark of the voting target next to the name of a party and its presidential and vice presidential candidate, is a vote for all of the electors of that party, but for no other candidates.”
Kelley said he believes that language “would be wildly confusing for voters.” But he said those instructions weren’t included on ballots in Orange County (or most other California counties) in the Nov. 3, 2020 election (or presidential elections going back a couple decades) because conditions that would require such language to be included wasn’t met, since no political party in California opts to “choose its electors” in the general election.
“So not only is the statute vague, but it doesn’t apply,” Kelley said.
The state association for elections officials is trying to get a California lawmaker to author a bill that would clean up this election code, but Kelley said they haven’t yet secured someone willing to take it on this year.
As for the assertion that his retirement is in any way tied to these claims, Kelley called that “nonsense” and said he’s been planning his retirement for two years.
Claim: Hart Intercivic, the provider for voting machines in Orange County, was cited in some news reports as saying they ship some of their devices with internal modems so election data can be transmitted in real time. This is in direct contrast to Neal Kelley’s claims that their machines are not online.
Facts: For Hart systems to be certified for use in California by the Secretary of State, any and all modems must be removed or deactivated, Kelley noted. Otherwise, they won’t pass strict lab certification. Some states, like Michigan, do use Wi-Fi systems, but Kelley noted such systems are banned under California law.
Claim: During last year’s gubernatorial recall, voters turned up at polling places and were told they had already voted.
Facts: There was an isolated incident in Woodland Hills during the September recall where technical problems caused perhaps a few hundred voters — registered to all parties — who showed up at two vote centers to be told, in error, they’d already cast ballots. The L.A. County Registrar-Recorder fixed the problem that day and all of those voters were allowed to participate with provisional ballots or to vote at other locations.
Claim: Torrance Police found more than 300 unopened California recall election ballots in a vehicle of a felon who was reported asleep with a loaded handgun and narcotics.
Facts: After a three-month investigation, Torrance police announced early this month that there was no evidence that the man planned to participate in election fraud. He had stolen many mail items and police say there’s evidence he intended to use the mail to commit bank fraud and identity theft.
Claim: During the recall, holes in ballot envelopes allowed someone to see who the vote was for. Votes could also be seen by shining a light through the ballot envelope.
Facts: Elections officials say those holes have been on ballot envelopes for multiple election cycles to help voters with visual impairments know where to sign their names. Since envelopes are designed differently in each county, many did not have holes that line up with any key ballot information. For those that did, people could place their ballots in the envelopes in a way that didn’t reveal their vote.
Even if someone’s vote does show through the holes or someone manages to see how that person voted in another way, there are safeguards to protect that ballot. All envelopes are checked for tampering, for example. And Californians can sign up to track their ballot throughout the tabulation process to ensure it makes it to county elections officials by answering quick questions at california.ballottrax.net/voter.
Claim: Nearly 400,000 votes disappeared from the recall counts during CNN’s live coverage.
Facts: On the night of the recall, a reporter mistakenly shared one county’s total vote count as its “no” votes, causing CNN to briefly post a graphic showing about 350,000 votes too many in favor of recalling Gov. Gavin Newsom. The network quickly caught and corrected the error.
Media outlets do make mistakes. But media outlets don’t count votes or determine elections, and media mistakes have nothing to with the vote tabulation process. In the instance referenced, CNN’s error did not sway the official vote count reported by elections officials.
Claim: Mail-in ballots were sent to people who no longer live in California and multiple ballots were sent to individuals.
Facts: While elections officials routinely clean up their voter rolls, ballots do sometimes get mailed to someone who has moved or died due to outdated records and human error. Anyone who gets a ballot for someone else is encouraged to write “no longer at this address” on the envelope and stick it back in the mail or notify elections officials to clear up the problem. And anyone who gets a duplicate ballot can simply destroy it.
Also, critically, there is very little chance of such ballots being used to cast fake votes.
All ballots returned by mail, placed in secure drop boxes or taken to in-person vote centers, are checked to ensure signatures on the outside of envelopes match signatures on file from DMV records. Most are verified by secure sorting machines. Any that don’t pass electronic checks are reviewed by hand by trained workers, with some elections offices offering live streams of that process and all open to approved elections observers. And if more than one ballot is cast by the same person, elections officials will investigate.
It’s a felony to try to vote with someone else’s ballot. All ballots are tracked and scanned, with suspicious activity investigated. That process, and threats of prison time, likely deters many potential bad actors.
Even if a fake signature occasionally gets through this review process, elections officials say the odds are simply too high of that happening in conjunction with the sort of massive, undetected mail fraud scheme that would have to occur for bad actors to swing a race.
Claim: An internal analysis of O.C. voter rolls showed 739 voters matched the Social Security Death Index, 750 Voters are 121 years old and 180,000 registrations have no birth place marked on their affidavits.
Facts: That all makes sense, according to Kelley.
The Orange County Registrar manages a database of 1.8 million voter records, with thousands of updates each day as new voters register and people move or die or change affiliation. On average, Kelley said they cancel about 1,100 voters per month who have died. So having 739 voters in that category during one snapshot of data is quite good, he argued, since his agency also often must do more investigation to determine a deceased voter beyond checking the Social Security index.
As for voters over 121 years old, Kelley said there was a group of voters in California in the 1970s and early 1980s who were assigned a date of birth of 1900 as counties started moving to computer-based systems. Those voters hadn’t included their birthday on their registrations, since it wasn’t required at the time, and the stand-in birth year was assigned so their information could be processed in the new systems. Kelley said that the group is getting smaller each year.
As for missing places of birth, Kelley said birth place is an option on state voter registration forms, not a required field. So some people add it and others don’t. Either way, Californians registering to vote must attest, under penalty of perjury, that they meet eligibility requirements — including U.S. citizenship.
