Add the Monterey County, California, Acting Registrar of Voters, Claudio Valenzuela, to our ever-growing list of Elections Officials who ought to resign immediately in the wake of extraordinary failures to assure that every legally registered voter who chooses to vote actually gets to vote, and then gets to have that vote counted accurately.
Valenzuela — who recently replaced the corrupt former Registrar Tony “Trust Me” Anchundo after he was charged with 43 criminal counts — incredibly instructed poll workers not to give paper ballots to voters despite an order from the Secretary of State prior to the election that any CA voter who wishes to vote on paper may have one — and despite lines of more than an hour for voters due to problems with the county’s crappy new Sequoia electronic touch-screen voting machines.
As smartly reported by the Monterey Weekly today, poll watcher Susan Sisson recounts the story of dozens of voters giving up and leaving without casting a vote in her one precinct alone after she was reprimanded for reminding poll workers that they could/should give a paper ballot to those who wanted them, or those who couldn’t afford to wait in line for hours on end.
Despite at least four still-undecided races in Monterey, where one candidate leads by anywhere from 47 to just 14 votes — few enough that those voters who couldn’t afford to wait in long lines for the machines, but could have voted on paper and made the difference in those races at Sisson’s precinct alone! — Valenzuela stands by his horrendous anti-democracy directive to poll workers:
The folks in Monterey ought to be up in arms about this jerk. Should be storming the County Board out there and demanding accountability and this guy’s resignation.
Read the full article. It’s just amazing what’s going on in our electoral system. But it won’t change until citizens on the ground demand that it does!
Let’s hope the incoming Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, busts some asses about this sort of thing where the failed, disgraced, outgoing SoS, Bruce McPherson, clearly didn’t give a damn.
Brad, I can’t say enough about how grateful I am you are now doing this for a living. I tell everybody, even strangers (ones that listen) to come here.
EVERYBODY SEND MONEY!
Thanks eternally!
Does Clint still live in the area? And if so, why not ask Valenzuela to make his day?
wow, the willful incompetence of our so-called “public servants”, in spite of all logic and facts, is truly mind-boggling:
thanks to honest and aware citizens, the full scope of idiocy in our election systems is finally starting to percolate into the mainstream media!
the full article is well-worth reading. kudos to the Monterrey Weekly for following up the story and not just letting election integrity issues, and officials’ incompetence, end with Election Day.
#2 Ancient — I got a canned call from Clint Eastwood prior to the election urging me to vote for his “friend” Bruce McPherson.
How do I call this official to confirm and ‘THANK’ them for their “support” of democracy?
It is about time that these “PUBLIC SERVANTS” be called on the carpet for placing their needs or the needs of some EVM vendor before the needs of the voter.
Top to bottom this joke that is computer faith based voting has to come to a halt in order to restore respect, honesty, and confidence in our democracy again.
Thank You to those who keep these issues on the front burner – until a permanent remedy is at hand.