Orange County investigates report of fake polling site, complete with ‘I Voted’ stickers

Orange County officials said Tuesday that they were investigating reports that someone established a fake voting center in Westminster, accepted ballots and handed out phony “I Voted” stickers.

Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said the incident was under investigation by his office and the Orange County district attorney’s office, so he couldn’t comment further. At about 3 p.m., he said officials were “on scene and active right now.”

Video purporting to show the phony voting center was posted on Twitter by Ty Bailey, an organizer with OCForBlackLives, an Instagram account supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. He said they were patrolling neighborhoods looking for voter fraud —"The orange man said to watch the polls, so that’s what we’re doing” — when an activist spotted a “Vote Here” sign written black marker.

Shortly after the video was posted, a Times reporter saw the sign discarded behind the building.

He said he saw people walking in with their ballots and then walking out with “I Voted” stickers, which he described as fake. He called the Registrar of Voters office, which confirmed it’s not an official vote center.

The purported voting center was at an address that is listed as the headquarters of Apogee International, a skincare company owned by Dr. Kimberly Ho, the vice mayor of Westminster who is up for re-election to the city council. A man who answered a phone number for Apogee said that the address was Ho’s campaign headquarters. The man declined to give his name or answer questions about the site’s alleged use as a fake voting center.

“You need to talk with the lawyer,” the man said and would not provide further names or information.

Van Tran, a former state assemblyman who is the attorney for the Ho campaign, acknowledged that people were coming there to drop off ballots.

He also said the office was helping to “advise” voters on how to vote. The boxes in the video were of empty ballot envelopes, he said, not actual ballots.

“It’s a false controversy that the opponents are creating,” Tran said, gesturing to several activists milling about in the parking lot. “There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any illegality is happening.”

Tran said this was also an effort by the campaign to help bridge a cultural barrier to voting with the local Vietnamese community.

“Fellow countrymen and countrywomen who speak the language, offering a service that no other government agency provides,” he said.

Activists in the parking lot said they had no relationship with Ho’s campaign opponents.

“I don’t even know who her opponent is,” said Justin Frazier, an activist with Clarity O.C., which describes itself as a grassroots voter engagement organization.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-03/orange-county-investigates-report-of-fake-polling-site-complete-with-i-voted-stickers

>>11442055 related:

District Attorney investigating potential Election Day ballot harvesting operation

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office launched an investigation Tuesday focused on a possible Election Day ballot harvesting operation at the campaign headquarters of Republican Westminster Vice Mayor Kimberly Ho.

The DA announced the investigation after a video surfaced on Twitter showing a handmade sign that said “Vote Here” outside of Ho’s re-election campaign office. Ballot harvesting typically involves a voter knowing they are dropping their ballot with a third party who then takes that ballot to a voting center or collection box.

The cell phone video was posted by Clarity OC, a grassroots organization that supports transparency in politics.

Justin Frazier, a member of the group, said he shot the video and called the Orange County Registrar’s Office after he and others in the organization spotted the sign around 11:30 a.m. while driving past Ho’s office on Beach Boulevard. “We wanted to make sure it wasn’t an unregulated voting place.”

Minutes later, after Frazier and others parked, he said their cars were swarmed by Ho and several other people wearing “Michelle Steele for Congress” shirts.

Then Ho and others from the office went back into the campaign headquarters and began moving boxes to the back of the building. At about the same time, some other people emerged from the office and attempted to discard what Frazier said appeared to be empty envelopes.

Ho told the group that her headquarters was a “legal voting place” and ordered Frazier and his group to leave.

“They were definitely trying to intimidate us,” Frazier said.

Ho did not respond to requests for comment.

Campaign officials for Steel, a Republican from Seal Beach, who is chair of the Orange County Board of Supervisors and running to represent California’s 48th congressional district in a tight race against Rep. Harley Rouda, D-Laguna Beach, denied any involvement in the incident.

“We aren’t aware of who they are,” said Lance Trover, Steel’s campaign manager. “But we are sure they are not employees of the (Steel) campaign.”

Van Thai Tran, a former state assemblyman and an attorney for Ho’s campaign, said the OC Clarity members were aggressive and had to be escorted off of the property by Westminster police. Frazier denies those allegations.

Tran said ballots were being collected at Ho’s headquarters but no voting was taking place. He believes the “Vote Here” sign may have been planted, though he didn’t say who might be responsible. He acknowledged there was a second sign outside of Ho’s campaign headquarters, in Vietnamese, that “Ballot Room.”

In the afternoon, a pair of investigators with the Orange County District Attorney arrived at Ho’s campaign headquarters and spoke with Tran for several minutes. Details about the investigation were not immediately available.

The controversy comes on the heels of a standoff between the California Republican Party and state authorities over the party’s use of unauthorized ballot drop boxes.

In October, the state GOP placed ballot collection boxes at campaign offices, churches, gun shops and other locations in at least three California counties including O.C. One widespread photo showed a box labeled “official” sitting outside near the sidewalk in front of Castaic church.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Attorney General Xavier Becerra issued a cease and desist, telling the GOP the boxes weren’t legal and could confuse voters. The party said it would no longer label the boxes “official” but refused to stop using them, insisting they’re legal under California’s ballot collection law.

Ballot collecting was legalized four years ago in California, with the passage of Assembly Bill 1921. The law allows anyone to collect absentee or mail-in ballots from voters and then drop those ballots into a mailbox or polling place. Election officials then check ballot signatures against the voter’s signature on record. And voters can electronically track their ballot throughout the entire process.

Some version of that process is legal in most states, but California’s ballot collection rules are among the most permissive in the nation. While collectors can’t fill out ballots for voters, tamper with them or be paid based on the number of ballots they collect, there are no restrictions on who can gather ballots or how many they can pick up.

The GOP calls the practice “ballot harvesting” and blames it for losses to the Democrats in O.C. and other places in 2018. The party has pushed to outlaw the practice. But since it hasn’t had luck changing the law with a Democratic supermajority in the state legislature, party leaders say they’re now running their own ballot harvesting operations.

https://www.ocregister.com/2020/11/03/orange-county-das-office-investigates-ballot-harvesting-in-westminster/