Certain SLO County conservatives just can’t stop pushing election lies | Opinion

San Luis Obispo County released its final ballot count Tuesday — nearly a month after Election Day. It was a long time to wait, especially for candidates in tight races.

While it was frustrating, spinning this into another conspiracy theory is beyond absurd — yet that’s exactly what government “watchdog” Darcia Stebbens has done.

She went on local talk radio and, among other wild allegations, accused County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano of deliberately delaying the tabulation of ballots cast in person at local precincts.

The reason? Stebbens claimed that Cano wanted liberal candidates to take an early lead and since in-person votes tend to skew conservative, she delayed counting them.

Say what?

What possible good would that have done? The winner with the most votes would have come out on top in the end. It’s not like polls were still open and voters could respond to trends in the count. If anything, it would be more demoralizing for liberals to be in the lead, only to ultimately lose.

To set the record straight, Cano did not cherry pick some ballots to distort the early returns.

Furthermore, our county was not an outlier when it came to tabulating votes. Other jurisdictions in the state also were still counting up until early December.

In fact, the last congressional race of 2024 was just called on Tuesday; Democrat Adam Gray defeated incumbent John Duarte in California’s 13th District, located in the Central Valley.

The reason it takes California counties so long was well articulated by The New York Times:

“California notably takes longer to tabulate votes because elections officials are flooded with mail-in ballots that must be inspected and verified,” the newspaper wrote. “The state gives county offices weeks to complete their tallies and reach out to voters whose ballots lack a proper signature.”

California proud

It should make us proud that California has policies and procedures in place to ensure all ballots that are cast are actually counted.

For example, it gives voters an opportunity to “cure” signatures that may not match what the office has on file. It also counts mail-in ballots received up to seven days after the election, as long as they are postmarked on Election Day.

Compare that to how many other state operate.

Several require mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day, rather than just postmarked.

Louisiana requires that mail-in ballots be received by 4:30 p.m. the day before the election, though voters who are in the military, overseas, hospitalized, or serving on a sequestered jury have until 8 p.m. on Election Day. How very generous.

Many states still require that residents have a reason to vote by mail.

In Texas, for example, mail-in voting is limited to those who are 65 or older; sick or disabled; expecting to give birth within three weeks before or after Election Day; traveling outside of their home county; civilly committed; or in jail, but still eligible to vote.

That does not encourage voter participation, and it does not make it easier for everyone to cast a ballot.

Bogus warnings about vote-by-mail

California, on the other hand, makes it simple.

Every registered voter receives a mail-in ballot — no excuse required. That’s proven to be a highly popular way to vote. In San Luis Obispo County, more than 92% of voters used mail-in ballots in the recent election, which means the county staffed 67 polling places with a combined total of more than 100 precincts for just 8% of voters.

The high vote-by-mail turnout indicates a high rate of confidence, yet we’re still hearing bogus warnings about the process, based mostly on rumor and speculation.

“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 during her interview on the KPRL radio show “Sound Off.”

She also objected to the way in-person voting was conducted on Nov. 5, claiming that the county “disenfranchised” voters by changing locations of a few polling places.

Here’s her logic: Voters who went to their old polling places would have been issued provisional ballots that may not have included all the local races they were eligible to vote in.

(Some advice for those voters: If you insist on voting in person, go to the right polling place, or vote early at the County Elections Office, where you will be issued the correct ballot.)

Look, the county Elections Office has gone to great lengths to serve an ever-dwindling number of in-person voters who have been brainwashed into believing there is something crooked about mail-in voting.

If anything, it’s time to phase out more neighborhood polling places and switch to regional voting centers that would be far better equipped to serve voters. That was considered in 2021 but rejected by the conservative majority that controlled the Board of Supervisors.

Results speak for themselves

We believe — and we fervently hope we are right — that the vast majority of San Luis Obispo County voters trust the system of casting and tabulating votes.

Yet a small number cannot resist spreading lies and rumors, even when election results are in their favor.

In SLO County, conservative candidates did well in several local races, especially in school board elections.

In the Lucia Mar Unified School District, for example, conservative candidate Mike Fuller managed to oust longtime incumbent Vicki Meagher. And in Atascadero, two well-qualified, liberal-leaning candidates lost, even though one of the three winners, Jodi Taylor, had been all but invisible during the campaign.

In national races, both Donald Trump and Republican Senate candidate Steve Garvey did well in San Luis Obispo County; Trump finished with 43% of the vote and Garvey did even better, with nearly 47%. Compare that to statewide returns of 38% for Trump and 41% for Garvey.

Why, then, are some local Republican Party leaders still tearing down a system that delivered positive results for them when it’s obvious that California is not going back to the old system of heavy in-person voting?

Instead of attacking what we have now, we should ensure that the county elections office has all the resources it needs to make the system operate as efficiently as possible.

In the meantime, recognize these conspiracy theories for what they are: falsehoods peddled by a small-but-noisy minority.