No, the California Recall Election Isn’t Rigged. I Should Know. I’m A Poll Worker.
I have been working the polls in the California gubernatorial recall election since the early voting period began on September 4. I have been listening with mounting fury to the scurrilous accusations — by the leading Republican candidate, a right-wing radio talk-show host with no political experience, and by a former Republican president, whose 2016 campaign was helped significantly by a high-level Russian intelligence operation — that our election is rife with fraud and that the results have already been rigged.
The media have too often repeated the baseless charges, sometimes with an eye roll, sometimes not, but rarely with any explanation or reportage countering the false allegations with hard facts.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber was appointed in December by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the unexpired term of Alex Padilla, who vacated his state office to accept Newsom’s appointment to succeed Vice-President Kamala Harris as California’s junior senator. Possibly by temperament, or possibly to avoid any appearance of a thumb on the scale for Newsom, Weber has been virtually silent for months despite escalating Republican attacks on the election process. Similarly, with rare exceptions, California’s 58 county registrars, who are directly responsible for administering their elections, have also refused to defend themselves, apparently counting on the eventual results to vindicate the process.
But how can they, when Republicans cynically have declared preemptively that the results are invalid?
An election is conducted by thousands of people like me, trained community volunteers and seasoned professional managers, and it is our personal honesty and integrity, not that of some abstract “system,” that has explicitly been called into question. I understand the reluctance of election officials to get caught in the partisan quicksand, particularly on the eve of the election. But that’s exactly what makes such unfounded eleventh-hour attacks so pernicious: those leveling them know full well they are unlikely to be challenged.
But enough is enough. Before the polls close and it’s too late, California voters deserve to know the truth.
Vote fraud at anywhere near the level to swing an election is simply impossible.
With most Californians now voting by mail, each returned VBM (vote-by-mail) ballot must be matched to a registered voter before it is tallied. Voters with minor mistakes will be contacted by County election officials and given an opportunity to cure the error so that their vote may count. Nobody is disenfranchised, systematically or otherwise. The paper VBM ballots are securely locked up and they cannot be tampered with. After they have been tallied and the results certified, they are stored and retrievable in the case of potential audits or legal challenges.
In Los Angeles, where I have worked several elections, when vote centers and polling places open up for in-person voting, all voting equipment will have been tagged, inventoried, and locked up each night. Blank ballots are at all times under the control of election workers, and voters deposit all their voted ballots — VBM ballots dropped off, and those cast through voting machines — in sealed collection boxes which are carefully tallied, double-checked, and signed off by two workers before they are transported each night to a secure collection center, from which they will taken to main headquarters for counting.
The voting machines themselves are not on-line, and therefore cannot be hacked. The process of voting itself is virtually foolproof: Once a voter’s registration is confirmed electronically with the master voter data base, s/he is issued a personalized ballot. If a voter’s registration cannot be confirmed, and s/he is issued a special conditional voter registration or provisional ballot, the voter can still cast a ballot, subject to later validation and tally by the registrar’s trained staff. The process is fully explained to voters as it happens in real time.
After voters feed in their ballots and make their selections on the touch-screens, they are given an opportunity to review and either approve or modify their choices. Then they print out the ballot and are given a second opportunity to inspect the physical ballot and ensure that the printed choices match the on-screen choices; if they spot a mistake or change their mind, they have up to three opportunities to revote a new ballot. Only then do they officially cast the completed ballot for tally.
Barring extraordinary disruptive circumstances, nobody is ever turned away without casting a ballot. Electronic records with paper backup documents ensure the accuracy and integrity of the counts and furnish a physical investigative trail should any result be challenged.
Bans on electioneering within 100 feet of the vote centers are prominently displayed and rigorously enforced by election poll workers. No voter can be pressured or intimidated, nor can they intimidate others. All voters are treated with courtesy, respect, and patience, and the entire process is geared toward making voting as easy and pleasant an experience as possible for everyone, no matter how unique and complicated any individual voter’s situation may be. The system is designed to handle it, and built to operate with maximum efficiency, transparency, and public confidence.
The public has no way of knowing just how seriously we take our responsibilities, and that is why both the casual slurs and the determined disinformation directed at our election system are so intolerable, and why I believe they must be countered so forcefully.
Speaking for myself, I had a literally life-changing experience when I traveled through the Deep South on a family vacation in the spring of 2018. It’s impossible to remain unmoved as you visit the civil rights museums and the historical sites and ponder the wellsprings of courage in those idealistic civil rights workers, and the magnitude of their sacrifice as they risked and even forfeited their lives for the sacred cause of empowering people to vote.
Near Meridien, Mississippi, several miles outside of town on Fish Lodge Road, you will find the small and humble Okatibbee Missionary Baptist Church. In its cemetery, a simple headstone, adorned with clasping hands, marks the grave of James Chaney, a Black civil rights worker murdered in 1964 with two white colleagues, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, by a posse of the local KKK with the aid of a sheriff’s deputy. The young men’s parents wanted them buried in adjacent plots, but with integrated burial out of the question in the state of Mississippi, the bodies of Schwerner and Goodman were flown back to New York. James Chaney, who will forever be only 21, rests alone. As we stood at his grave, we were moved more than words can express.
When the concerted Republican attacks on voting rights and election integrity began in earnest during the summer of 2020, I thought of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman — and so many others — and knew I had to somehow get involved. Helping to carry out an election, directly assisting people in casting their ballots, was the best way I could think of, and after I completed my training, I became a first-time poll worker in the November presidential election.
In the California recall election, I’m now completing my third tour of duty. I am more impressed than ever with the dedication and professionalization of my colleagues, and with the checks and balances and various security measures taken to ensure the integrity of both the process, and the results. In our small way, each of us honors the legacy of those civil rights workers and all the voting rights advocates who came before them, many of whom laid it all on the line to champion a democratic process and constitutional right that today’s Republicans so cavalierly malign with impunity.
And so I say to them, to steal a famous phrase, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
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