Stephen Frank, California Political News and Views, 4/5/22
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VERY BIG STORY!!!!
Just before the November 2020 election, the California Republican Party Chair, Jessica Patterson sent out numerous emails begging people to vote, begging people to help get out the vote. She always said, “Every vote counts!” And I agreed with her.
Yet now we find out that does NOT carry over to votes in the CRP- for instance:
“I had closely followed the daily vote logs and watched the numbers increase over the days I became part of the process. Specifically, I want to look at my counts as an example. Lonnie Sortor – Governor. On the eve of 3/23/2022 the total vote count associated with my name was 31. However, when the final / official list was presented, I only had 14 total votes. I realize that regardless of 31 or 14, I still did not meet the 200 nomination threshold for endorsement consideration.
It is my understanding that once a vote is cast within the CAGOP portal, it is not reversible. I believe each delegate can vote for multiple candidates as the process unfolds and more information is readily available.””
Another candidate, George Yang running for Superintendent of Public Instruction appears to have “lost” north of 40 votes. Though he did reach the magic 200, by losing those votes it makes it appear that his opponent has more support than George. A finger on the scale?
Karen Turgeon sent this out: “As I dug deeper, it was brought to my attention 5 other delegates had the same problem. They are listed here with their permission in the spirit of transparency:
- Mingi Bodine (Santa Cruz)
- Mark Gilham (Redwood City)
- Kalwant Sandhu (Mountain View)
- Stephanie Shoquist (Gilroy)
- Victor San Vicente (Milpitas)
On Saturday I asked Bryan Watkins for a copy of the audit of the vote—he sent me the results, NOT the audit of the algorithm. So, we still do not have the audit and we know the vote totals are incorrect. If every vote counts, then the CRP has decided that at least 80 votes do not count. As a reminder, who does not want an audit of a voting system? The Michigan Democrat Party, the Arizona Democrat Party, the Georgia Democrat Party, the Pennsylvania Democrat Party—I hate to think the California Republican Party has joined that group in not wanting to assure an honest vote. As Chair Patterson says, “Every vote counts”.
To prevent this from happening at the Endorsement Convention at the end of April, we need to go back to paper ballots, with observers watching the count. If not, and this situation happens with the vote for Endorsement, it will be very embarrassing for the CRP to see this in the newspapers that the endorsement vote, had votes missing!
TALKING POINTS
- In the last few days I had a discussion with a high official of the California Republican Party. We discussed why the CRP did not do any voter registration. He gave two reasons. First, he claimed it cost $50 to register a single Republican.
More importantly, he said there “were no people left in the State to register (his words). All we do is reregister NPP’s trying to get them back in the GOP.” Too bad the CRP has not done its homework on this subject. The Democrat Party has, especially the San Mateo Democrat Party. This comes from their web site:
“2022 Midterms Election Work
BAC will begin canvassing to the Central Valley on Saturday April 2nd to register new voters. If you’re interested in future canvassing events we’ll be registering voters in Kings, Tulare and Kern Counties from now until the general election in November. There are over 100,000 potential but unregistered new voters in these three counties so we have a lot of work to do! For more information, contact April Vargas at [email protected].
Phone Banks to AZ, NV & CA, continue every Wednesday at 5pm PDT. On April 9th, BAC will begin hosting Saturday morning phonebanks from 10 AM PDT. Sign up here.”
While the California Republican Party can not find anyone to register in the whole State of California, the Democrats have found 100,000 unregistered in just ONE congressional District. I believe this is the Valadeo seat—with blindfolds on our eyes, and Democrat volunteers registering voters, looks like we will lose another Congressional seat. I wonder how many other seats the Democrats are still registering voters?
- As of the close of filing, there are 15 Assembly seats, 3 State Senate seats, 2 congressional seats and a Board of Equalization seat without a Republican on the June ballot. By the time the June primary is over these numbers could hit 30.
Summary: No voter registration, no candidates, questionable voting internally. The CRP Chair gets paid $250,000 a year for this—while the Democrat State Chair gets paid $127,500 to register voters, run candidates and run fair elections internally. Oh, for all this, the CRP has 7 staff members that get paid $150,000 a year or more—all paid more than the Chair of the Democrat Party.
- We also have found that a “candidate” for Statewide office was added to the voting portal a day before he even took out papers to run. Some candidates that took out papers had to wait 2-3 days after filing to get their name on the voting portal. Most candidates had to get friends and political clubs to help them get signatures for their petitions to run for statewide office. Yet, we had one candidate, who filed close to the end of the filing period had no such problem. A CRP staffer called select delegates on behalf of this candidate, asking for them to help distribute the petitions and gather signatures. Is this a new service for select candidates? In a few days names and the rest of the story.
(Periodically the California Political News and Views will publish tidbits of political news, to keep you in the loop of what the pooh bahs know. The phrase “tom/tom’s” comes from my mentor, Lorelei Kinder who never passed a rumor, just called to tell me what she heard on the “Tom/Tom’s”. This column is named in her honor.)
