SLO County supervisors decide future of local elections after marathon meeting
San Luis Obispo County supervisors on Tuesday opted to conduct future elections using a traditional neighborhood polling place model — after listening to hours of comments from callers who shared voting concerns rooted in misinformation.
The Board of Supervisors’ agenda item began with a presentation from county Clerk-Recorder Tommy Gong, who shared the results of a post-2020 election voter survey and asked for direction regarding different voting system models the county could implement starting in 2022.
The supervisors were deciding between a traditional neighborhood precinct system using 76 polling places and a newer model using 20 “voter service centers.”
The county employed the voter service center model during the 2020 election, primarily because it required fewer workers and has a heavy emphasis on early voting. Both of these features were crucial during the pandemic, as fewer volunteers signed up to work, and crowded polling places could have promoted coronavirus transmission.
After a marathon session that ended near midnight, supervisors voted 3-2 to adopt the polling place model. District 2 Supervisor Bruce Gibson and District 3 Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg cast the dissenting votes, arguing that voter service centers improve participation by allowing voting on four days instead of one.
Precinct voting means residents who want to cast their ballots in person will do so at assigned polling places in their neighborhoods on Election Day.
The board will appropriate money to implement the selected election model during budget planning in June.
For this year, under state COVID-19 election rules that extend through 2021, all voters will automatically receive vote-by-mail ballots, which would apply if there’s an election to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom this fall.
Meanwhile, the state Assembly is currently considering AB 37, which would mandate that all counties permanently send vote-by-mail ballots to all registered voters.
If that bill doesn’t pass, only voters who are signed up to get mailed ballots will continue receiving them, a number that includes nearly 82% of the electorate, Gong said.
Gong discusses county’s voting system
Gong’s presentation included high-level information about the county’s ballot-counting system, which uses Dominion Voting System equipment to scan marked ballots. The system is entirely paper-based and is not connected to the internet.
Gong’s office signed a four-year contract with Dominion in January 2018 after putting out a request for bids for a new voting system. Dominion is the voting system vendor for 40 of California’s 58 counties, said Steve Bennett, Dominion regional sales manager.
The California Secretary of State must certify all election equipment prior to use, which involves a thorough process to ensure everything works correctly.
The county also conducts its own post-election audit that involves hand-counting a 1% sample of ballots.
In March 2021, the Republican Party of San Luis Obispo County requested the county allow an independent firm to audit its voting system. However, after elections are certified, the county clerk-recorder can’t legally allow a recount or audit, Gong said.
The county keeps ballots for 22 months, but they can only be reopened in the case of a lawsuit, he said.
As of October 2020, about 37.5% of voters in San Luis Obispo County were registered as Democrats, while 35% were Republicans, according to a previous Tribune story. In the November 2020 election, President Joe Biden won the county with 59.7% of the vote, while former President Donald Trump took 38.2%.
However, many Republicans have also won election to public office since the new voting system was put in place, including District 1 Supervisor John Peschong, District 5 Supervisor Debbie Arnold and District 4 Supervisor Lynn Compton, who won re-election by just 60 votes in June 2018.
Surveyed SLO County voters confident in election system
Gong also discussed a post-election survey his office conducted, which asked 5,533 people about their voting preferences and confidence in the county’s election system.
More than 60% of voters who responded to the survey were Democrats, about 15% were Republicans and 10% chose to skip the question, said Helen Nolan, deputy clerk-recorder, who gave part of the presentation to the board.
The low number of Republican respondents was likely due to the fact that the local party promoted its own survey — which asked different questions — over the county’s poll.
“When I expressed to them that we would not be able to subject the voting system to the audit, we had gotten our survey rating and I encouraged them to participate,” Gong said of the Republican Party. “It doesn’t appear as though they promoted their followers to participate in the survey, which is unfortunate, because they created a survey.”
Gong’s office asked survey respondents whether they preferred to vote by mail or in person. About 82% of people said they like to vote by mail, compared to 18% who vote in person. This result matches the county’s records, which show about 82% of all voters are registered to vote by mail, Nolan said.
Almost 94% of November 2020 voters cast mailed ballots instead of voting in person.
About 56.6% of respondents also said they prefer the voter service center model over 43.4% who like the precinct model.
The majority of respondents also said they were confident their votes were counted in November and that they’re confident in the integrity of the county elections office. However, responses to these questions were split along party lines, with more Democrats expressing confidence in the county elections office than Republicans, Nolan said.
The county is still collecting survey responses through May 25, Gong said.
Decision comes after 3 hours of comments
The supervisors’ late-night decision came after hours of public comment, during which many callers repeated misinformation and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the county’s Dominion vote tabulation machines.
Many comments expressing concern about the county’s voting system seemed coordinated and followed a similar format. Some callers also seemed to live outside the county, based on their pronunciation of ‘SLO County’ as ‘S-L-O County’ and ‘San Luis Obispo’ as ‘San Louie Obispo.’
The content of Dorothy Abdelaziz’s recorded call used the same wording as that of many other commenters.
“I have lost confidence in our election process, partly due to the voting machines,” Abdelaziz said. “We want Tommy Gong to remove them and also have them audited. If not, we need to have Tommy Gong removed.”
Many commenters expressed concerns about aspects of elections that are controlled by the state, not the county, such as voter identification rules and ending widespread voting by mail.
Like Abdelaziz, some also expressed a desire for hand counting of ballots and want an independent audit of the county’s voting system, which Gong is not legally allowed to permit.
The public comment took an ugly turn at one point when one caller accused Gong, who is Asian American, of being a member of the Chinese Communist Party.
There was also a large number of callers who said they appreciated the way the county conducted the 2020 election and prefer voting by mail. Some callers said they struggle to get to polling places due to their age, because they have a disability or because they’re working and caring for children.
“As a member of the Latino community, I’m also very concerned because it disproportionately, (greatly) affects us,” Allene Villa said. “Many in our Latino community work long hours.”
Villa also addressed some callers who said “illegal immigrants” should not be permitted to vote.
“I keep on hearing over and over that non-citizens should not be allowed to vote, almost implying that non-citizens are voting, committing voter fraud here in our county,” Villa said. “Show me the evidence. Show our Latino community the evidence.”
“Latinos are hard-working individuals,” she added. “The immigrant Latino community in my area, the Five Cities, mostly work (in) hotels, farming and restaurant-type of jobs. They pick your food and cook the food that you eat. They deserve respect. These type of comments only serve to divide and increase racism. Let’s respect our Latino and immigrant community.”
Supervisors discuss SLO County’s voting system
Following the public comments, Gibson called on all the supervisors to express support for Gong and the county’s election system. Gibson and several other supervisors also apologized to Gong for having to hear the racist slur while listening to the comments.
“I don’t care, right now, whether there are people out there who have concerns, because those concerns have been fed by lies and misinformation,” Gibson said. “But I would like each of us to make a clear statement. I personally have no concerns about the integrity of elections conducted in San Luis Obispo County. I would ask each of my colleagues to similarly state that.”
Ortiz Legg and Peschong both affirmed their confidence in the 2020 election, but Compton and Arnold did not do so.
Compton continously suggested auditing a larger portion of votes may help restore voters’ faith in the county’s elections. And Arnold suggested looking into counting voters’ ballots entirely by hand.
Peschong noted he had been quoted in The Tribune a few days after the election saying he “(believes) that the election here in San Luis Obispo County was a fair and honest election, and it was counted properly.”
He expressed concerns about the voter service center model, saying he’d heard from at least 15 constituents who preferred their neighborhood polling places.
“I will tell you that one of my biggest concerns, though, is that we have disenfranchised, senior citizens, at least in my district, Peschong said. “Because they like to vote at the polling location, and we did away with polling locations.”
While casting her ‘no’ vote, Ortiz Legg called returning to the precinct model “going backwards into the future.”
“Most of the people from the Republican Party have won the mayor’s races and the city council races at about seven of the cities and the jurisdictions,” Ortiz Legg said. “So I don’t really know where the idea that we’re not having a fair election (comes from). If there was something that was there that demonstrated, ‘Oh, something went really crazy,’ that would be one thing. But, in fact, it looks like it was a very fair election. And outcomes as they may, I think that we must continue to utilize the system that we have.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2021 at 12:55 AM.
