California residents are increasingly aware of the importance of individual participation in the affairs of a constitutional republic. How can transparency, accuracy, and accountability in elections be restored? On April 7, the Eagle Forum held an event titled “Restoring Election Integrity in California” in Huntington Beach, one of the activities initiated by various civil organizations in Orange County since January, aiming to promote change at the local level.
Urson Russell, chairman of Patriot Force California, believes that the four bills SB540, AB37, AB969, and SB1174 enacted in California in recent years have greatly changed elections, constraining local governments, election officials, and individuals. Some laws even target actions at the local level.
Russell, who has always been patriotic, realized the need to serve the public after witnessing a series of events during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. He said, “More and more people like me are being awakened and starting to pay attention to America and its changes.” To fulfill the commitment to serve the country, the non-partisan grassroots organization Patriot Force California was established in 2021. Over the past three years, he and a friend have visited 24 of the 58 counties in California, realizing that the election system is complex and built on high-tech network data management.
Russell said, “Those who have not truly operated this system need to acquire a considerable amount of knowledge to realize the extent of their ignorance.”
The high concentration of the population in a few large counties poses the first challenge in changing the election landscape in California. Russell said it is even more necessary for people to start paying attention to local elections such as city councils, school boards, and board of supervisors.
In statewide elections in California, one county, Los Angeles County, can offset the voting population of 45 smaller counties out of 58. Russell said that the Republican-leaning counties in the state totaling 34 have fewer vote counts than the Democratic votes in Los Angeles County, with a difference of nearly 940,000 votes. Therefore, when it comes to presidential elections, federal senators, or ballot measures in California, the tendency in Los Angeles County almost determines the outcome; coupled with several populous Democratic counties, this sets the “blue” tone for California.
According to the Census Bureau, in July 2024, the population of Los Angeles County was approximately 9.577 million, close to a quarter of California’s 38.965 million population. In the November election that year, Los Angeles County had about 5.74 million registered voters, exceeding a quarter of California’s voter population.
California’s Voter’s Choice Act, SB450, passed in 2016, created a sense of “convenience” for voting. Russell said this is the second challenge because the culture of “convenience” is more easily promoted in California.
About half of the counties in California have implemented SB450: everyone receives a mail-in ballot, there are voting boxes everywhere, and people have more time to vote. But Russell believes that this is not conducive to the “fairness, transparency, and traceability” of elections. For example, the widespread voting boxes are required by law to be under security surveillance, but many places are not monitored.
The “convenience” is also reflected in voter registration, which can be done online or through the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and temporary registration, using provisional ballots, and so on (without verifying if the voter is legal). Russell cited Orange County’s claim that there are tens of thousands of changes in voter registration records annually, and the county elections department sends letters to confirm the voter’s identity and whether they are active voters. He mentioned some anomalies where people’s party affiliations may be “automatically” changed; someone moves out of California, but is only marked as a temporary change on the voter registration list.
Russell compared the situation before and after the implementation of SB450: in the past, Huntington Beach had nearly 90 polling places, where neighbors would vote together on election day; now it has been reduced to 13 vote centers, where people can drive to any center to vote, and they can also vote in another county (the ballots will be returned to the county where they are registered).
He pointed out that after the implementation of SB450, the control of voter registration is centralized in the state government, and counties directly obtain voter data from the state. County election centers have no interaction with the databases of the DMV, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the United States Postal Service, and police departments.
Since the legislation of SB450 in 2016, California has wasted about 96 million ballots. Russell said that if these discarded ballots were stacked, they would be over 100 miles high, which is a huge waste. On February 25 of this year, a special election for State Senator in District 36 (Orange County) was held in California, with only 152,000 out of 595,000 registered voters casting their votes, wasting at least 443,000 ballots.
In September 2021, the Governor signed AB37, the “Vote by mail ballots” bill, requiring ballots to be sent to everyone starting 29 days before election day; ballots received with a postmark date before election day or arrived within 7 days after the election would also be valid. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, some of these practices have been continued.
This is the third challenge facing California elections, Russell said. Mail-in voting brings a lot of work and a lengthy processing process, leading to massive waste. For example, it costs $25 per hour to hire staff to flatten mail-in ballots for the scanners to read; employees must check for smudges, ensure correct markings, verify signatures, replicate ballots, and manually tally them. From sending out mail-in ballots to finalizing the statistics, it takes nearly two months––elections have become an almost impossible task, with huge costs at every corner.
Russell believes that if people vote in person, any mistakes can be corrected on the spot, and the ballots can be immediately entered into the system. Currently, each county still randomly selects 1% for manual counting to verify the accuracy of the 99% tallied by machines. Russell said, if you don’t trust the machines, why not use manual counting? For example, dispersing them to small polling places for tallying the local election day results.
He mentioned that the long counting process obscures the final results for people. He cited the case of Young Kim, the former Congresswoman for the 45th district of California who ran for re-election in November 2024. On the day after the election, when ballots from in-person voting had been counted, she was leading her opponent by thousands of votes. However, as time went on, she won in Orange County, accounting for 89% of the voters but fell behind in Los Angeles County, where she lost by 653 votes.
In the 2024 election, Orange County voters cast 1,417,397 votes, with 72% using mail-in ballots, and the counting centers processed approximately 1.094 million mail-in ballots. How many times do election personnel have to touch a single mail-in ballot? “Can’t you wait and vote in person on election day?” Russell believes that would be relatively safer.
Russell stated that centralization and control are the fourth challenge in California elections. People cannot see how the machine system works, leading to a lack of transparency and security. In April 2023, Shasta County attempted manual counting to reduce redundant work but was legally prevented by the state government. In October 2023, Governor Newsom signed AB969, the “Elections: voting systems” bill, prohibiting county election officials from using manual counting in any election without the Secretary of State’s approval.
“Do we really need to use machines?” Russell asked, pointing out that some counties in California have only a few thousand or even less than 1,000 voters, with 12 counties having fewer than 15,000 registered voters.
In March 2024, Huntington Beach, a chartered city in California, passed voter identification verification measures, only to be sued the following month by the state Attorney General and Secretary of State for violation. Although the latest outcome of the lawsuit in April this year was the rejection of the state government’s appeal by the Orange County Superior Court, Governor had already signed SB1174 in September last year, granting California residents the right to vote without showing identification when voting and covering chartered cities.
California has 13 chartered counties, including Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange County, etc.; out of 478 cities in California, 108 are chartered cities, meaning their governance and elections can be regulated by their charters. Orange County has 10 chartered cities, including Anaheim, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Irvine, Newport Beach, and Huntington Beach.
(Note: This article presents the views of the speaker and does not represent the opinions of the publication.)