Registrar cites suspicious signatures; recall group calls claims ‘audacious’
The spokesman for a group trying to recall District Attorney George Gascón called fraud accusations by Registrar Dean Logan “an audacious and shameful attempt to avoid oversight of his own misconduct,” as the battle over signatures in their recall petition heads back to court.
In December, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant granted a preliminary injunction sought by the recall group, which set a deadline of March 31 for the completion of a signature audit that would evaluate hundreds of thousands of signatures.
On Wednesday, Logan’s office issued a statement contending that the signature audit for the Petition to Recall District Attorney George Gascón submitted on July 6 found 367 instances where the signatories were deceased before the petition’s circulation period.
“Based on our review of two recent petitions — one a countywide recall petition and the other a statewide initiative petition — my office has identified irregularities that suggest the possibility of fraudulent signature submission that I believe may warrant investigation,” said Logan in a prepared statement.
The statewide petition Logan referred to was Statewide Initiative 1935 (Limits the Ability of Voters and State and Local Governments to Raise Revenues for Government Services), scheduled to be on the November 2024 ballot.
Tim Lineberger, a spokesman for the group seeking to recall Gascón, said the recall group that sponsored the signaturegathering effort was the victim and the figure Logan gave is statistically irrelevant as a fraction of 1% of the names needed.
“In furtherance of a ‘runout-the-clock’ strategy, the
registrar is now seeking to improperly appeal basic public records requests, which would effectively drag on the review for years and nullify its purpose entirely,” according to a statement from the committee shared in a news release by Lineberger. “The recall committee recently filed a motion for calendar preference in relation to this matter, which outlines in detail the registrar’s blatant obstruction of the review over the last seven months.”
The committee is also planning to file a motion next week to dismiss an appeal from the registrar’s office, he said.
The group seeking to throw Gascón out of office needs to present 566,857 valid signatures to meet its goal, according to Logan’s office, which reported in August the group collected 715,833 names, but that more than 195,000 of them were invalid.
In response, the recall group sued, which led to Chalfant’s ruling: Logan’s office must allow the recall committee to review prior signatures on file for voters whose signatures were denied due to a mismatch, which was nearly 9,500 names; and that the clerk’s office has to turn over addresses changed during the circulation period, as well as the notice-of-address changes on file. The county noted that there were about 32,187 signatures in total where the addresses the clerk’s office had on file didn’t match the petition.
As the audit deadline nears, Lineberger said Logan’s office has failed to meet some of the terms of the injunction, accusing the registrar’s office of “slow-walking” the process by not providing an electronic list of the valid signatures. He said what should have been a two- to three-month process is now going on month seven because of the lack of cooperation.
Logan also alleged in the release that there’s “commonality in the circulators between the two petitions,” and that his office is continuing its review for possible irregularities.
“The integrity of these processes is fundamental to our representative form of government and influences the confidence and participation of our electorate,” he said in the news release. “Attempts to compromise the integrity of this process ought to be scrutinized.”