SANTA ANA (CNS) – As Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page showed reporters the safeguards in place to ensure a secure election in the June primary Wednesday, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer put potential fraudsters on notice.
“If you cheat we’re going to catch you,” Spitzer said. “I can assure you we’re going to prosecute you … In this county you don’t get a pass for election fraud.”
Spitzer emphasized that voter fraud remains rare in the county.
“I’m fairly confident we have fraud-free elections,” he said.
During his time as the county’s top prosecutor, Spitzer said his office has filed four electioneering cases, which includes illegal signature gathering or forging of signatures on election documents.
The most frequent fraud was committed by candidates, Spitzer said, adding he has filed 10 cases against candidates that included not living in districts they sought to represent.
“Fraud is very rare” among voters, Page said. He recalled just two cases of voters attempting to illegally vote since 2016.
Christy McCormick, the vice chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, praised the registrar at Wednesday’s media tour of the office’s headquarters in Santa Ana. She said the office won an honorable mention recently for its efforts to keep voters up to date on the office’s functions.
“It serves as a model” for other offices across the country, McCormick said.
Page said new technology the county acquired following the 2022 election has allowed his office to streamline how many provisional ballots need to be issued. For instance, the registrar issued about 120,000 provisional ballots in 2018, but in 2024 that was down to about 40,000.
In 2018, it took 18 days to count all the ballots, but it took nine days in 2024, Page said.
An issue in this year’s election is the lengthy list of gubernatorial candidates. The total of 61 candidates means the county has had to issue a ballot 17 inches long for the first time, Page said.
The tall ballot has led some voters to place it back in the envelope sent to the registrar in ways that have presented challenges in submitting it through a scanner to record the choices, Page said.
“People are getting creative — they’re not folding it in the same way,” Page said. “It’s created a little slowness in processing, but we’re staying on top of it.”
The county has received about 230,000 ballots so far. Page encouraged voters to get their ballots in as soon as they can so most of the votes get counted on election night.
The county has multiple steps in place to guard against illegal voting, Page said. The office’s machines and employees can flag ballots with a question on the voter’s signature.
Three employees need to agree that a voter’s signature is questionable, and then the voter is notified to “cure” the ballot by validating it. The deadline for doing that now has been pushed to June 24, so the earliest Page can certify the election results is June 26.
County Supervisor Janet Nguyen recalled how she was first elected to the board in 2007 by just three votes. She was ahead on election night by 54 votes, then fell behind by seven votes, so she requested a recount and prevailed.
“Every vote matters,” Nguyen said.
Nguyen said she favors voter ID laws and cited how a Costa Mesa woman was able to get her vote in the gubernatorial recall election counted for a fictitious registration she created for her pet dog. When she tried it again in a federal election the ballot was flagged and not allowed, Page said.
Laura Lee Yourex pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of knowing registration of a nonexistent person to vote and is awaiting sentencing Oct. 16. Page said he believes that the case should serve as a deterrent to anyone considering similar fraud.
Nguyen praised Page’s office for its effort to ensure that Garden Grove and Stanton residents had access to ballots during the recent chemical leak emergency.
Page’s office had to scrap a vote center in Garden Grove when it needed to be used for evacuees, so his office had a team sent to evacuation centers to offer to print ballots for voters who may have had to flee their homes without grabbing their vote-by-mail ballot. Five voters took advantage of that, Page said.
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