FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 12, 2016 Contact: Martha Sullivan, 858-945-6273, marthasullivan@mac.com
WHAT: Rally & Press Conference to COUNT ALL the VOTES! #MichaelVuWeAreWatchingYou
WHEN: Monday, June 13, 2016, 7:30-8:30 am
WHERE: San Diego County Registrar of Voters, 5600 Overland Av., San Diego
How can the San Diego County Registrar of Voters do a 1% manual count audit of the vote when 285,000 uncounted votes were not included in the sample selected on Wednesday, June 8th?
The ROV will also start counting the thousands of Provisional Ballots that were issued in much higher numbers than typical – including No Party Preference voters who requested the Democratic Ballot in order to vote on the Presidential nominee, contrary to published ROV procedure. Poll workers inappropriately made No Party Preference voters subject to challenge and additional scrutiny just because they chose a partisan ballot, an act that turns your ballot into a big question mark. It is unfair for a No Party Preference ballot expressly ALLOWED in a partisan race to become challengeable one-by-one for almost any reason. These should be quickly moved through their screen without any challenge allowed unless there is some other reason.
San Diego County's Registrar of Voters, Michael Vu, has a track record of questionable election practices going back to the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, right up to a 2014 City Council election in Chula Vista:
"Also during that time two high-ranking supervisors in Vu's office were indicted and convicted of rigging a recount of ballots cast for the 2004 presidential election. Ohio law required a random recount of 3 percent of the votes cast in an election. If the hand tally differed from the machine results, a full recount of all ballots would occur under the law.
"The two were convicted of selecting certain precincts to recount ahead of time so that the hand recount would not differ from the totals on the machine votes, triggering the wholesale recount.
"The convictions weren't the only issue during his tenure. The May 2006 primary was marred by several breakdowns. It took a week to count all the votes. New optical-scan readers for absentee ballots didn't work, meaning all 17,000 of those votes had to be counted by hand. There weren't enough poll workers, and those that showed up weren't well trained. In all a special review panel hired by the county in the wake of the primary to analyze what happened placed much of the blame on Vu and his staff." AND
"The contest in the Chula Vista race, which McCann won by two votes, contends that Vu should have allowed the 15 provisional and mail ballots to be counted. Provisional ballots had addresses that did not match the address on file with the registrar, the lawsuit said, though the signatures of the voters on the ballot and on file matched. Moot said he doesn't know if the 15 ballots are votes for Padilla or not.
"These were votes that if you look at existing law on provisional ballots would appear to be ones that should be legally counted," he said. "They're validly registered, the signatures match, and they are in Chula Vista."
Concerned voters from across San Diego County will gather by the entrance to the San Diego County Operations Center, at the end of Overland Av., just north of Clairemont Mesa Blvd. We will have speakers to update us on the process of Counting and Reporting All the Votes:
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Maggie O'Neill and Jose Antunez, Bernie Sanders San Diego Grassroots
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Ray Lutz, Citizens Oversight
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Will Johnson, Coalition for Labor and Community Solidarity
Open Mic for people to share their story of not having their vote counted on Election Night.
BACKGROUND: Pursuant to State Law, a manual tally of at least 1% of the precincts and 1% of the mail ballots, selected at random, is required as part of the post-Election Day canvass of the election. State Law provides 30 days to complete the canvass prior to certification of the election results. The random selections of 1% of precincts and mail ballots to be manually tallied for the June 7th, 2016 Presidential Primary Election were made on: Wednesday, June 8th, at 3:00 p.m. The actual manual tally of the votes cast on these selected precinct and mail ballots will commence on: Monday, June 13th, at 9:00 a.m.
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