The City Hall-sought Measure A sales tax extension was failing passage in every ballot tally until the last one...when the County election office claimed it passed by a 16 vote margin (out of nearly 100,000 votes cast.) LB's Reform Coalition the took the lead in pursuing a recount, spending over $21,000 to date on a process it contends turned into "an utter charade," alleging Logan used flaws in a new voting system "to obstruct the process and terminate it before completion."

If successful, the Reform Coalition says its litigation "effectively will return to the public its right to verify election outcomes, rather than relying purely on non-transparent computerized tabulation."

In its release, the Reform Coalition states:

[Scroll down for further.]

[reform Coalition release text] Mr. Logan was responsible for implementing for last March’s primary election an entirely new voting system, called VSAP (an acronym for Voting Solutions for All People), which counts votes electronically. The criticality of an auditable paper trail of ballots, especially in the case of a close election, such as the recent vote on Long Beach’s Measure A, has apparently been lost on Mr. Logan. Instead of determining the accurate vote count, he sought to obstruct the recount by every means available to him, in order, we believe, to cover up the flaws in his new VSAP system. Given that most vote counting errors arise from the computer misreading scanned images of vote-by-mail (VBM) ballots, the recent decision that all voters receive ballots by mail, due to the pandemic, makes this litigation all the more urgent...

...The fundamental change in ballot collection caused by VSAP is that anyone can vote at any vote center in the County. This takes hundreds of thousands of ballots, which used to be pre-sorted by polling precinct, and instead mixes them all together. As a result, VSAP has rendered a manual recount—in other words a human, paper trail audit—of the original machine count, a logistical hurdle. But it is not an insurmountable one, as the County has always sorted a high volume of VBM ballots by precinct in the past prior to counting. In fact, VSAP is now being used as an excuse to eliminate pre-sorting of ballots altogether and instead burden the individual making the recount request with that cost.

Were this decision by Mr. Logan allowed to stand, it would effectively make recounts impossible in most cases in Los Angeles County (and LA County accounts for one quarter, approximately, of most statewide election results). Furthermore, such a policy effectively serves as a cover up for the counting flaws inherent in the VSAP system, a system which counts ballots in the least transparent way possible. All ballots are scanned and the images of those ballots are stored on a server, and then counted by means of computer software, rather than in plain view of the public. Our partial recount, before it was halted, had already proven that the machine count is not accurate enough to be definitive in the case of a very close election. Half a dozen votes that the computer recorded as ‘over-votes’ (both a Yes and a No vote, spoiling the ballot for the particular race) were in fact clear votes for either a Yes or a No. Yet Mr. Logan, rather than supporting the recount—or using his own authority under the election code to conduct a full hand recount at County expense, given these results—at that point shut it down. Furthermore, Cal. Secretary of State Alex Padilla has confirmed, in his conditional approval report for VSAP (p.17), that these computer systems have a basic security flaw. They can be hacked by means of USB ports, which are quite literally only protected by a piece of tape.

For these reasons, it is necessary effectively to put VSAP on trial, and Mr. Logan, along with it. If we cannot trust the results of voting in a democracy, we have no democracy at all.

Our lead attorney, Fredric D. Woocher, has been one of the foremost practitioners of election law in California for four decades.

Sponsor

Sponsor

Sponsor

Sponsor

Sponsor

Support really independent news in Long Beach. No one in LBREPORT.com's ownership, reporting or editorial decision-making has ties to development interests, advocacy groups or other special interests; or is seeking or receiving benefits of City development-related decisions; or holds a City Hall appointive position; or has contributed sums to political campaigns for Long Beach incumbents or challengers. LBREPORT.com isn't part of an out of town corporate cluster and no one its ownership, editorial or publishing decisionmaking has been part of the governing board of any City government body or other entity on whose policies we report. LBREPORT.com is reader and advertiser supported. You can help keep really independent news in LB similar to the way people support NPR and PBS stations. We're not non-profit so it's not tax deductible but $49.95 (less than an annual dollar a week) helps keep us online.