Organizers attempting to oust embattled Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón expressed concern Monday, Aug. 8, that election officials aren’t following state law, leading them to reject valid signatures needed to force a recall election.

The “shockingly large” 22% rejection rate of 717,000 petition signatures randomly sampled last month signals the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s Office isn’t complying with a 2022 law governing signature verification, claimed a letter from Steve Cooley, co-chairman of the Committee to Recall District Attorney George Gascón, to the Board of Supervisors.

By comparison, Cooley noted, the county rejected 2% of signatures as non-matching on vote-by-mail ballots cast in the November 2018 general election. In the 2020 election, the rejection rate was less than 1% in Los Angeles County, he noted.

Last month, election officials sampled 35,793 signatures, or 5% of the total, and found that 27,983 of them were valid. The number falls within the parameters requiring the county to verify all of the signatures.

Unlike votes cast in elections, voter petitions typically are plagued by signers who are not registered to vote. For that reason, petition supporters try to collect many more signatures than the number required to force an election. To force a recall election for Gascon, supporters need 566,857 signatures of registered voters.

Tim Lineberger, a spokesman for the Gascón recall campaign, said the committee has asked the registrar-recorder/county clerk to specify which portion of the 22% rejection rate is due to unregistered voters and which portion is due to non-matching signatures.

Process ‘highly regulated’

Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s Office, said election officials are taking steps to ensure that the recall petition signatures are validated fairly and accurately.

“The petition verification process is highly regulated and governed by provisions codified in the California Government Code, California Elections Code, and the state Code of Regulations,” Sanchez said in an email Monday. “Our office adheres to those guidelines and regulations. Once the process is complete and a determination on sufficiency is made, those same regulations provide the proponents the opportunity for review, if desired. Right now our focus is on completing the verification within the legal timelines with integrity and appropriate quality review.”

Dean Logan, the county’s registrar-recorder/county clerk, described the committee’s concerns about signature counting as “selective outrage” in a Tweet posted Monday. “when confronted with fear of an unknown outcome, invent a fictitious narrative to misinform and cast doubt,” Logan tweeted.

#selectiveoutrage — when confronted with fear of an unknown outcome, invent a fictitious narrative to misinform and cast doubt.

— Dean Logan (he/him/his) (@DCLogan) August 9, 2022

Elise Moore, a spokesperson for Gascón, declined to comment on Cooley’s letter.

What state law says

According to state law, there is a basic presumption that signatures on petitions or ballots are valid unless there is reasonable doubt to prove otherwise, said Cooley, a former Los Angeles County district attorney.

A signature that the initial reviewer identifies as possessing “multiple, significant and obvious differing characteristics” from the signatures in the voter’s registration record can only be rejected if two different election officials unanimously find beyond a reasonable doubt there is a difference, according to the change in state law.

“Under current law, the Registrar/Recorder/County Clerk should have applied the reasonable doubt standard when it examined the signatures during the random sampling,” Cooley said in the letter.

Cooley said a registrar-recorder/county clerk division manager told him those responsible for conducting both the random sampling and full examination of Gascon petition signatures are using verification training materials from 2017 and not from the changes made in 2022.

Cooley also said election officials have not responded to a public records request asking for quality control measures implemented by the county to detect errors for bias or corruption during the signature verification process.  The county also has rejected the recall committee’s request to have observers view the vote counting.

Previous recall attempt

An initial attempt to recall Gascón fizzled in early 2021, when organizers were apparently hampered by the rapid spread of COVID-19. The campaign renewed its efforts in October and was bolstered by endorsements from several unlikely, high-profile supporters, such as former Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and county Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

The Prosecutors Alliance of California, comprised of a consortium of progressive attorneys, has steadfastly opposed removing Gascón, saying the recall campaign, which has generated nearly $8 million in contributions, is being bankrolled by “fringe conservatives.”

Gascón, who took office in December 2020, has issued numerous directives that his critics maintain are friendly to criminal defendants. Among the most controversial are the elimination of cash bail and sentence enhancements and an end to the prosecution of juveniles in the adult court system, regardless of the seriousness of the crime. However, he has since retreated from some of those policies.

Some prosecutors also contend Gascón has a cozy relationship with the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, noting that he has hired several defense attorneys from that office for prestigious, high-paying jobs in his administration. Critics have described many of his top aides as political operatives who are unqualified for the positions they hold.