The election that spawned malfunctions and long lines during Los Angeles County’s 2020 primary was even more chaotic and poorly planned than previously indicated, according to an unpublished consultants’ report obtained by POLITICO. The 390-page document by Slalom Consulting describes a beleaguered election department that missed key deadlines, failed to properly manage a vendor that supplied faulty equipment, and hired inexperienced call center staff to help election workers deal with the breakdowns. The report holds implications for other local governments as they increasingly adopt the same kinds of election changes implemented last year in Los Angeles County, one of the nation’s most populous voting jurisdictions. Those include an expansion of early voting; a switch from neighborhood precincts to vote centers where anyone registered in the county can cast ballots; and the use of electronic devices instead of paper “poll books” to verify voters’ eligibility. The county managed these changes ineffectively, the consultants wrote, leaving it unprepared to respond to technical problems. Among them were troubles with the electronic poll books, which have also caused confusion and hourslong waits in places such as Georgia, Philadelphia, North Carolina and South Dakota. Other jurisdictions should take heed, one elections expert said in a text message. “The spectacular failure of LA’s primary shows just how brittle the vote center model actually is, and how easily elections dependent on vote centers can be crippled by malfunctioning e-pollbooks,” said Susan Greenhalgh, senior adviser on election security for the election integrity group Free Speech for People.
Texas’ wasteful election audit leads to some easy predictions | Rick Casey/San Antonio Report
It may have been the last official act of 2021 by any Texas state official above the level of a state trooper. Secretary of State John Scott’s office on New Year’s Eve released findings from the first stage of the “forensic audit” of the 2020 election. It is an ancient tradition of political practice to release bad news at a time when it is least likely to cause ripples, and nothing fits that bill like New Year’s Eve. Not only are news organizations on holiday staffing, but who watches TV news on New Year’s Eve? For that matter, who is alertly reading the newspaper the next morning? What was the bad news? It was the good news that neither Russian hackers nor Venezuelan-based voting machine companies had manipulated or manufactured hundreds of thousands of Texans’ votes to elect Joe Biden president. It was hardly even news at all in that it is exactly what local officials had been saying for more than a year. But for conspiracy theorists it was, to say the least, disappointing. Perhaps the timing of the release was focused on one particular news consumer, a man who was presumed to be partying New Years Eve and golfing the next day at Mar-a-Lago. Donald Trump has a special interest in the audit, which examined election data from four urban Texas counties: Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant. State officials announced the audit in September a few hours after he released a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott pushing for it despite the fact that Trump had carried Texas by nearly 6 points. Since Abbott had recently appointed Scott secretary of state, it’s safe to assume that the governor was involved in generating the audit. Abbott already had put on the agenda and signed into law a special session bill that mandates such audits after future elections.
Full Article: Texas’ wasteful election audit leads to some easy predictions