Long Beach Reform Coalition Files Suit Against LA Co. Registrar Dean Logan

The Long Beach Reform Coalition filed a lawsuit Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court against the County’s chief election officer, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan.

The lawsuit seeks a writ of mandate and injunctive relief to force Mr. Logan to restart the recount of Long Beach Measure A as a traditional, paper ballot recount at a reasonable cost. If successful, the lawsuit will force the return to the public its right to verify election outcomes, rather than relying purely on non-transparent computerized tabulation.

In a press statement, LBRC said it recently took the lead on the recount of Long Beach Measure A, an extension of the city sales tax which was initially failing on election night and on all subsequent count updates, until the very last day for certification of the vote, last March 27th. On that date, Measure A was certified as having passed with a bare 16-vote margin out of approximately one hundred thousand votes cast.

Many more cities, counties and advocacy groups may have to file similar lawsuits if they are to combat dubious new voting systems and/or all vote-by-mail elections.

Last week California Globe reported on the Election Integrity Project’s recent report to the California Secretary of State which found:

• Over 458,000 California registrants who have likely died or moved will be mailed ballots. These registrants have not voted or updated their registrations since November 2008 or prior. Though likely deceased or relocated, they remain classified as “active” status.
• Almost 178,000 have never voted.
• Almost 2,000 have birthdates indicating they are 105+ years old.
• Over 38,000 Californians appear to have more than one voter registration.
• 24,000 of them will be mailed two or more ballots under an all-mail scenario, because they have more than one active registration each.

Immediately after EIPCa’s report, Gov. Gavin Newsom  signed an executive order requiring every voter in the state to vote-by-mail in the November 2020 election, bragging that he is the first governor in the country to do this.

The Long Beach reform group had their own problems:

“Unfortunately, that recount, which LBRC paid over $21,000 to initiate, became an utter charade as LA Co. Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan used the flaws in his new VSAP voting system to obstruct the process and terminate it before completion.”

“Unbelievably, the design for the $300 million new VSAP system, custom-developed for LA County and ten years in the making, apparently did not consider recounts, something that should be one of the most basic functions of an election system. In other words, a system developed in the wake of the 2000 presidential election debacle in Florida and the subsequent Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, which required all new voting systems to have an auditable paper trail, became the reason for not having an audited paper trail of the first razor-thin margin outcome under its use.”

California Globe will follow the Long Beach Reform Coalition‘s lawsuit.