Just two months in the wake of the efforts failing to try and recall Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, the campaign committee has stated that it now plans to issue a lawsuit against the county’s Registrar of Voters, alleging the voter rolls were artificially inflated, and quite a few signatures were falsely invalidated.
As stated by the Committee, independent and non-partisan data analysts estimated that the active voter rolls for Los Angeles County were allegedly vastly overshot by well over 208,000 and could have reached well up to 515,000 total voters once the county officials first set the overall number of valid signatures for the recall to go through.
If the overall estimates prove to be true, the effort to take down Gascón from his position could end up being advanced onto a ballot.
“The initial review of invalidated signatures demonstrated the Registrar’s counting process was seriously flawed, resulting in substantial errors, the wrongful invalidation of many valid signatures, and the disenfranchisement of thousands of Los Angeles County Voters,” stated the Committee in another statement. “These extremely disturbing findings necessitate a complete and timely review of all invalidated signatures.”
The push to initiate a recall of Gascón came to light after the controversial district attorney managed to take the seat back in December of 2020. Critics of Gascón created the recall in the wake of his various so-called progressive policies, such as the elimination of all cash bail for misdemeanor and select felony charges, trying to clean up Los Angeles county.
As expressed by the Committee, over 39% of the invalid signatures being reviewed were improperly falsified as printed, non-matching, and unregistered. Many others were labeled invalid because of duplicate signatures, while many others had set up a different address instead of the one attributed and already registered to the voter in question.
This past August, The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan stated that he had completed the verification of the 715,833 petition signatures handed in by the group attempting to recall the controversial heavily progressive DA.
In order to initiate a recall, a total of 566,857 valid signatures from the petition were necessary for its advance.
Logan’s office issued a report that just 520,050 total valid signatures were recorded, with the rest of the 195,783 signatures labeled as invalid, with over 90,000 of them marked as unregistered to vote and another 45,000 were duplicates.
Many officials made the argument that such issues could not have substantially had an impact on the outcome of any possible recall and have hurled accusations at the Registrar of putting “‘arbitrary and capricious limitations’ on the review process that limits the number of hours, workstations, and number of reviewers to information that will help them determine whether the invalid signatures are legitimate.”
“This review is currently being obstructed by the Registrar’s office,” stated the Committee. “The Recall DA George Gascon Committee will be filing for injunctive relief imminently and is also exploring other significant issues, such as the inaccurate and inflated number of signatures required to qualify the recall due to bloated voter rolls.”