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Los Angeles County’s 2020 primary was even more chaotic and poorly planned than previously indicated, according to an unpublished consultants’ report obtained by POLITICO.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.
California: How Shasta County Became A Petri Dish For the Big Lie | Kaila Philo/TPM
A deep red enclave in rural Northern California has recently seen the balance of its local governing body shift to the far right. Now it’s about to embark on an experiment tried in few other jurisdictions across the country: counting all of its paper ballots by hand. The county clerk warned TPM that the switch could be more problematic than the hard-right majority could have anticipated. The Board of Supervisors in Shasta County, California, has served as a petri dish for the most noxious refuse of Trumpism over the past few years. From COVID-19 denialism to conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems, a handful of county board members have used their positions to breathe life into Trumpian conspiracy theories and grievances at the local level, pulling in MyPillow CEO and noted Trump brown-noser Mike Lindell along the way. It started on Aug. 11, 2020, when a local militia member Carlos Zapata hijacked a board meeting to go on a rant against COVID-19 restrictions, and threatened violence if they continued. “Right now, we’re being peaceful, and you better be happy that we’re good citizens, that we’re peaceful citizens,” he said, “but it’s not going to be peaceful much longer, OK?” His rant, which subsequently got attention from Alex Jones and Fox News, portended the near future: Less than a year later, a local anti-government militia led an effort to recall county supervisors who followed mitigation measures—and ultimately succeeded in ousting one of them.
Full Article: How A Rural California County Became A Petri Dish For the Big Lie