Did the 2024 election disenfranchise voters in SLO County? Here’s a Reality Check
It’s been nearly a month since Election Day, and the final results of races across San Luis Obispo County were set to be certified on Tuesday.
But with multiple races still tight down to the end, some voters expressed frustration with the ballot count process taking longer than usual in SLO County.
North County resident and local elections watchdog Darcia Stebbens was among those concerned about the slow election canvass. She has previously called for recounts of two county Board of Supervisor elections.
On Nov. 20, Stebbens joined Cal Coast News reporter Karen Velie on her KPRL radio show “Sound Off” to voice her concerns with the vote casting and counting process in SLO County.
“I’ve been called an election denier,” Stebbens said on the radio show. “I don’t deny that we have elections. I just deny that they are counted accurately.”
At the time the show aired, nearly 25,000 ballots remained to be tallied.
Among Stebbens’ chief concerns were the delays in counting ballots, the integrity of voting by mail and the relocation of a few polling centers from previous elections, the last of which she claimed was engineered to “disenfranchise” voters.
SLO County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano said this is a dangerous mischaracterization of the election process.
“The word disenfranchise is being used way too loosely,” Cano told The Tribune. “Stop using that word. We are not disenfranchising anybody. Everybody has an opportunity to vote.”
The Tribune reached out to Stebbens to further discuss her concerns, but she deferred to her radio appearance to answer any outstanding questions.
As part of its ongoing Reality Check series, The Tribune took a closer look at the 2024 election in SLO County, why results have not come sooner and whether any part of the process actually disenfranchised local voters.
Did moving polling locations prior to the election disenfranchise voters?
To make in-person voting possible, each registered voter is assigned to a specific polling location for their ballot.
In the most recent election, three polling places were moved to new spots from previous years.
On the radio, Stebbens highlighted that the polls for the Kiler Canyon precinct were relocated 15 miles north to San Miguel from their previous spot at Plymouth Church in downtown Paso Robles; Dresser Ranch voters were directed 10 miles south to Creston; and most confusingly to her, some Creston voters were reassigned to a precinct center in Atascadero.
The change in these poll locations was an issue for Stebbens, who thought it was intentional.
“They’re saying this is because of districting, but this is confusing the voters and disenfranchising the voters,” Stebbens said on the radio. “I believe this was by design.”
But Cano said polling locations being moved is nothing new, and that it was, in fact, a result of the 2020 redistricting process.
Every 10 years, California goes through a head-to-toe redistricting, from U.S. congressional and state legislative districts down to city, school boards and other local elected offices.
Voter precincts are also redrawn as a result of redistricting, since precincts group voters participating in the same races, and the races you vote in depend on the districts you live in.
There are 158 precincts in SLO County — an interactive map of which can be found on the county’s website — and the process of drawing their boundaries is complex, Cano said.
Once the boundaries are decided, voters in neighboring precincts can be assigned to similar polling locations. Polls have more or less remained in the same spots over the last few decades because precincts haven’t changed much, but the most recent redistricting process was a little different, Cano said.
In 2020, many local city council and school districts moved from at-large — meaning all candidates compete across the same area — to being broken up into smaller trustee areas, further complicating how precinct boundaries were drawn and for some voters, moving their polling place depending on which races they now qualified to vote for.
The at-large office terms are staggered, so half of the new seats went up for election in 2022 and the other half in this election. As a result, some precincts changed even between 2022 and 2024, so some voters’ polling locations changed, too.
Cano said she doesn’t “have anything to do with where the lines are drawn.”
The 2020 redistricting process was further complicated when the current Board of Supervisors replaced a radically redrawn supervisor district map that gave Republicans an advantage, a Tribune analysis showed. In 2023, the board adopted a new map designed by the firm Redistricting Partners.
Precincts also depend on the supervisor district lines, so some precinct boundaries likely changed again between the 2022 election and the March 2024 primaries.
“It just goes to show how much it affects voters every time districts are changed,” Cano said.
Stebbens also felt that voters were affected, but additionally alleged that the precincts were changed “by design” to confuse voters.
“We have reports of people saying, ‘I’ve voted there for 50 years, what’s happening?’” Stebbens said.
Stebbens’ main concern was that voters who didn’t want to drive out of their way to their new assigned polling location would be “disenfranchised” by voting on a provisional ballot at a different, potentially closer polling place on Election Day.
When you vote provisionally, you may vote on a different precinct’s ballot, meaning it might not include your own local races.
With a number of close races, these local votes matter, Stebbens said.
“It makes it so that there are some races that you don’t get to vote for that you should have been able to vote for,” Stebbens said.
To Stebbens, this constituted voter suppression.
“I have a problem with voters wanting to vote in person and being discouraged from voting on Election Day, because that is constitutional,” Stebbens said.
But Cano said it’s misleading to call the movement of polling locations disenfranchisement.
“I think the definition needs to be clearly addressed, because ‘disenfranchised’ means I am preventing somebody from voting,” Cano said. “Mailing everybody a ballot in the mail 29 days ahead of time, having 20 different drop-off boxes open 29 days ahead of the election, including both of our offices, clearly does not disenfranchise any registered voter in this county.”
The definition of “disenfranchise” is to deprive someone of the right to vote. Cano said voters had multiple opportunities to vote, including going to their assigned polling location, voting by mail with their provided precinct ballot, dropping off their vote-by-mail ballot at one of the drop boxes, getting a different vote-by-mail ballot at the elections office or even voting provisionally.
“We would never stop or prevent anybody from voting, however you want to vote,” Cano said.
Stebbens theorized delays in ballot counting could be intentional
Many voters’ concern, reflected by Stebbens, was the slow speed at which ballots were counted this election canvass.
More than anything, Cano said the delay in counting ballots was due to the huge voter turnout and too few resources to count ballots quickly, but that all things considered, the elections office has “never been this fast” and “never been this accurate.”
Cano receives emailed reports from the Secretary of State’s Office every day. As of Nov. 21, SLO County had the eighth highest percentage of registered voter turnout for any county in California, fourth when adjusting for population.
“As the elections official, I have a job of accuracy to do here, and it’s not about the speed of getting things done. It’s about making sure that every valid, eligible ballot gets counted,” Cano said.
Even if she did count the ballots quicker, state law mandates that all California counties must wait 28 days before certifying their election results.
But Stebbens still cast doubt not just on the delayed results, but on Cano specifically and the integrity of the election.
“The counting process can definitely be improved at the Clerk-Recorder’s Office” Stebbens said. “I think (Cano) ended up creating chaos, perhaps trying to not have some of the votes counted as early as possible against local races.”
Stebbens said she was “theorizing” that if Cano — knowing that “conservative voters typically vote in person on Election Day” — supported a non-conservative candidate, she would be incentivized to “delay the processing of ballots” so that a non-conservative candidate “was out in the lead for as long as possible.”
Cano said this accusation was “completely false, misleading, and not possible in any manner.”
All ballots cast in person at the polls were counted on Election Night and released by the last ballot drop at 12:20 a.m. that night, Cano said.
According to the county’s most recent unprocessed ballots report, there were 25 ballots cast at the polls on Election Night that are yet to be counted. Cano said these were either damaged or missorted, and for that reason, she cannot guarantee they will be counted.
Since then, the ballots that have been counted are vote-by-mail and provisional ballots, both of which require extra effort and due diligence to verify.
“To say that I, as the elections official, am holding up releasing results because I have somebody that I want to remain on the top of the leaderboard for as long as I possibly can, it’s not even possible,” Cano said. “I cannot even understand how that would be possible.”
Were there votes cast in Grover Beach and Morro Bay that were unaccounted for?
Another concern of Stebbens’ was the validity of ballots, both those cast in person and by mail.
When people vote in-person at a polling location, they sign a voter roster before receiving their ballot, ensuring every ballot is indeed cast by a registered voter.
But Stebbens said she received reports on Election Day from the Morro Bay and Grover Beach polling locations that ballots were being distributed to voters outside of the normal process — specifically, she claimed that people failed to sign the voter roster, resulting in unaccounted-for votes.
“Technically, the ballot has been counted, but they are not able to assign a voter to that ballot,” Stebbens said.
Cano said this happened during the March primary, when one polling location did not collect any signatures and the ballots were counted before the rosters had been scanned, but that “nothing like that happened this election.”
Every voter roster in this election was balanced, meaning that there were as many in-person ballots cast as there were signatures collected on Election Night across the county, Cano said.
The only time the numbers were off was when there were more signatures than ballots — which was a result of poll workers unnecessarily collecting signatures for people dropping off their vote-by-mail ballots, Cano said. Overbalanced rosters are not harmful, she said.
Importantly, Cano also noted that no SLO County voter has appeared as having voted twice.
Stebbens also cast doubt on the security of mail-in ballots.
“There’s no way to have a chain of custody with a vote-by-mail ballot so that you know which person sent in that ballot, signed that signature, and that it’s a valid, legal, registered voter,” Stebbens said. “There’s no way that you can 100% determine that that’s the case.”
Instead, she advocated for required voter identification at polls.
Cano said that she and all election staff are trained in signature verification for mail-in ballots, but that any changes to the voting process would require a change in state legislation.
“There’s a huge amount of room for improvement, even for the system we have right now,” Stebbens said.
Some voters received multiple ballots
Stebbens also mentioned on the radio that there were reports of voters having received multiple ballots.
Local business owner Julie Tizzano was one of those voters.
Tizzano was temporarily without a permanent address when she moved from Arroyo Grande to Santa Maria, she told The Tribune. She ended up receiving two ballots as a result, one at her business address in Grover Beach, where she was temporarily receiving mail but not living, and one forwarded from her original address in Arroyo Grande.
Cano said this kind of situation “happens all the time,” and that it is “not an anomaly” or “anything alarming.”
Anytime there is a change of address, a new ballot is automatically cued up for that voter at their new address and any old ballots sent to the previous address are voided, Cano said.
“That’s exactly how the process should work,” Cano said.
This story was originally published December 3, 2024 at 11:21 AM.
