Rachel Maddow, Washington Post weigh in on calls for audit of SLO County election
San Luis Obispo County has found itself in an unexpected spotlight this week as national news outlets weighed in on the recent uproar over “election integrity” that’s spilling into small counties across the country.
On MSNBC Thursday, during a segment of ”The Rachel Maddow Show,” the host dove into a discussion of the May 4 county Board of Supervisors session that featured more than a hundred public comments from apparently organized callers demanding an audit of the 2020 election based on unfounded problems with voting machines.
The comments hit a particular low point when one caller questioned whether county Clerk-Recorder Tommy Gong has any relationship to the “Chinese Communist Party.”
The conservative board majority ultimately voted to revert the county back to a traditional neighborhood precinct system using 76 polling places over a newer model implemented during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic using 20 “voter service centers” and has a heavy emphasis on early voting.
On Thursday night, Maddow said that the Board of Supervisors “opened the phones to public comment at their meeting.”
“What they got is hours of callers who wanted to talk about the 2020 election in their county, the one from November, and specifically about the county’s chief elections official, a man named Tommy Gong,” Maddow said.
The show highlighted several of those callers.
“From the evidence I’ve seen, I believe this machine was used to alter the vote counting in this county, and we need an independent forensic audit to verify its accuracy,” one unidentified caller said. “Tommy Gong is using every excuse available to prevent an audit, giving his assurance that the count was 100 percent accurate.”
“Why isn’t he concerned? In Michigan, the judge ordered the forensic audit of the Dominion machines be made public,” another caller added. “The audit proved Dominion machines are designed to be manipulated. Modem chips are embedded in the computer motherboard, which means there is hidden Wi-Fi access to change votes.”
“I have lost confidence in our election process, partly due to the voting machines. We want Tommy Gong to remove them and also have them audited,” another said. “If not, we need to have Tommy Gong removed.”
Maddow then played the caller using the racist slur against Gong.
“We want the voting machines audited! We want a forensic audit because of the modem chips and the mother boards, planted by China because our county clerk is a secret member of the Chinese communist party! We need him gone too!” Maddow said sarcastically in response.
Maddow pointed out that Gong is a third-generation American citizen who’s worked in the county clerk’s office for more than 15 years.
“But here’s Trump supporters in San Luis Obispo County, California, saying they suspect he must be controlled by the Chinese communist party — because, you know,” she said.
Maddow said that the local public meeting “is a sign of how the fake audit clown-show Republicans are running in Maricopa County, Arizona, is spreading across the county.”
“Trump supporters across the country are trying to copy it, trying to cast doubt about voting machines or voting results in any place they can so as to create some sort of fog of uncertainty about the election everywhere,” Maddow said.
The issue also made its way to Joe Scarborough, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” who for more than nine minutes Friday morning lambasted GOP-backed conspiracy theorists he said are “desecrating democracy.”
The segment goes on to mention the SLO County Board of Supervisors meeting. A clip provided free on the MSNBC website cuts off prior to the locally relevant discussion and a transcript of that exchange was not yet available late Friday morning.
Washington Post interviews Tommy Gong
San Luis Obispo County also featured prominently in a May 19 Washington Post article titled, “Inspired by Arizona recount, Trump loyalists push to revisit election results in communities around the country,” which also recounts the May 4 supervisors meeting.
“The ramifications of Trump’s ceaseless attacks on the 2020 election are increasingly visible throughout the country: In emails, phone calls and public meetings, his supporters are questioning how their elections are administered and pressing public officials to revisit the vote count — wrongly insisting that Trump won the presidential race,” the Post wrote in its story.
Gong told the Post that he was surprised by the suspicion expressed by callers and that he’d never heard the term “forensic audit” until it was raised by callers at the meeting.
“We were all a little shocked to hear it,” Gong said.
The Post reports that “The term appears in a lawsuit filed against California state officials by a group called Election Integrity Project California, alleging without evidence that Dominion’s machines produce inaccurate tallies. The group’s website’s top feature is a fundraising pitch to ‘Join Us Today In Our Fight for Fair, Transparent and Honest Elections.’”
Gong also told the Post that a state-mandated sample recount following the November election produced only a two-vote difference from the machine results.
The Post also interviewed SLO County Republican Party Chair Randall Jordan, who said he is working with Election Integrity Project California and is seeking an audit of the 2020 vote to restore confidence in America elections among those who believe voting is a “waste of their time.”
“The public has the right to ask for fair and honest elections and not take the word of our officials who have lied to us in the past,” he told the Post.
This story was originally published May 21, 2021 at 1:38 PM.
