How did SLO County become an epicenter of Republican ‘start the steal’ movement?

Who would have thought a smallish, purple county on the “left coast” would be thrust into the national spotlight by a bunch of Big Lie believers intent on restoring election “integrity”?

It wouldn’t be so out-of-the-ordinary for, say, Orange County.

But laid-back, middle-of-the-road San Luis Obispo County? Home to one of America’s happiest cities?

And yet, here we are, thanks to local Republican efforts to rally the troops, with SLO County making a name for itself as a new bastion of conservatism, even though Democrats lead in voter registration — 69,819 voters to 63,652.

Over the past couple of weeks, the goings-on in SLO County have been skewered on the nationally televised “Rachel Maddow Show,” and on “Morning Joe.”

They’ve been written up in The Washington Post and covered on KCRW, the NPR station out of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Times columnist Mark Z. Barabak just wrote a piece focusing on County Clerk/Recorder Tommy Gong, who has been the brunt of many of the attacks.

One caller went so far as to question whether he was connected to the Chinese Communist Party.

“In California,” Barabak writes, “the nuttiness has spread to San Luis Obispo County, the midpoint between San Francisco and Los Angeles, where the denialism took an ugly, racist turn.”

Callers inundated Board of Supervisors meeting

The sudden notoriety stems from a May 4 Board of Supervisors item on local elections, where approximately 150 callers bombarded the board. Most of the messages had been pre-recorded; around a dozen speakers called in live.

Caller after caller read out a list of demands straight out of the Republican voter suppression handbook:

Require voters to show ID.

No early voting.

No “blanketing” the county with mail-in ballots.

No machines! Go back to hand-counting ballots.

Not all messages were negative; around 50 callers expressed support for the elections office and/or urged the county to continue to make mail-in balloting widely available. (There have been calls to limit it to people with physical handicaps or to require voters to request a mail-in ballot every time there’s an election.)

But they were outnumbered by the dozens of callers making unproven accusations about voting machines; claiming mail-in voting is “ripe for fraud”; accusing county officials of lying; demanding a “forensic audit” of 2020 general election results; implying that noncitizens have been voting; and calling on the county Elections Office to be “integrous.”

Some members of the community speculated that maybe — just maybe — a sizable number of those callers weren’t from San Luis Obispo County at all, but had been recruited from other places to bolster the cause of local Republicans.

Their rationale: A couple of callers gave weird pronunciations of “San Luis Obispo.” And several others said they were from San Luis Obispo County, without specifying a city. One just gave “California” as a place of residence.

Yet by checking names of callers against voter registration rolls, we verified that at least 113 of the approximately 150 who called in that day are indeed registered to vote in San Luis Obispo County. Several other names could not be checked because the messages were too garbled to decipher the spellings of names.

In other words, we can’t blame outside agitators for making the county look — on the political spectrum — more like Maricopa, Arizona, than San Luis Obispo, California.

Comments reveal GOP election strategy

None of the callers alleged the presidential election was “stolen” — Donald Trump’s name was rarely, if ever, mentioned — but the intent was obvious.

After calling for changes — including requiring photo IDs to vote — one man finished his call with this remark: “Otherwise, a Republican will never get in again.”

In other words, they aren’t so much trying to Stop the Steal.

Rather — in the words of The Washington Post — they are trying to start the steal. These folks want the system rigged to ensure Republicans are in control — never mind what that means for our democracy.

Fortunately, most of what they requested — including requiring voters to show IDs — is under state control, and cannot be changed by individual counties.

Virtual meetings allow recorded calls

Before COVID, the outrage directed at the local Elections Office might not have gotten nearly as much attention.

But like everything else, government meetings have changed dramatically on account of the pandemic. Many agencies, including the SLO County Board of Supervisors, don’t allow any members of the public to attend meetings in person.

Instead, they typically provide online access and take both live and prerecorded calls for public comment. The recorded calls are often played during the meeting — as they were in this case — though SLO supervisors have on a couple of occasions dispensed with listening to all of the calls during their meetings. The recorded calls are still entered into the public record.

That’s smart.

Many prerecorded calls are the vocal equivalent of “astroturf” emails; people simply pick up a phone and read a scripted message. There’s no schlepping down to the County Government Center and maybe waiting hours for an item to be heard, as in pre-COVID days.

That makes it easy to get a large volume of calls, creating the illusion that everyone and their brother is of the same mind on a particular issue — which is exactly what occurred with election “integrity.”

Are local Republicans really in lock-step?

Speakers at the May 4 meeting would have us believe all GOP members are in total agreement.

“All Republicans have lost confidence in the voting system,” said one caller, who went on to predict our Constitution will be destroyed and we will become a “socialist society.”

Certainly, the higher-ups in Washington, D.C., spout similar rhetoric. Just look at what happened to Liz Cheney.

But are there no local Liz Cheneys?

Are there no members of the party of Lincoln willing to speak truth to the power of the local GOP leadership?

To tell them conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines are nonsense?

To let them know that in this day and age, hand-counting ballots is no longer a viable option?

To inform them that occasional mistakes — such as sending a ballot to a deceased person or to someone who’s moved — are honest errors and not evidence of massive fraud?

Look, we don’t expect Republicans to support President Joe Biden, any more than we expected Democrats to support President Donald Trump.

But is it too much to ask that they respect the sanctity of the vote and the honorable people who oversee elections in San Luis Obispo County?

Maybe it is, in which case it’s incumbent on the rest of us to give election officials our full vote of confidence, because we firmly believe the majority of SLO County residents trust their ballots were properly counted in 2020, and will be in every election going forward.

A vocal minority may have captured the attention of Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, The Washington Post, L.A. Times and others, but — pardon the overused expression — that’s definitely not who we are.

This story was originally published May 28, 2021 at 6:00 AM.