277,000
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Investigative reporter David Goldstein found thousands of people received not one, but two ballots in their own name. And thousands more were sent to people who’ve moved or died.
Becky Sprigg has lived in her Santa Monica apartment complex for 30 years. That’s why she was surprised when a ballot was delivered to Carol’s old apartment – even though Carol — whose name we’re not revealing — moved 15 years ago and died almost ten years ago.
“It’s curious that someone who passed away ten years ago would receive a ballot,” Sprigg aid.
We found that’s not the only curious ballot. Or ballots!
Tommy Robinson received “two” ballots in the mail addressed to him – one to his address on Wilshire at apartment B406, the other using the number sign B406. He could have voted with either. Or even both! But didn’t.
“That was my initial thought when I looked at the two ballots side by side, I said, ‘Gee what are the implications?’ once I realized it wasn’t my neighbors ballot I got in the mail,” he said.
As Southern Californians have started voting in person and by mail we found he’s not alone.
Ellen Swensen with the Election Integrity Project California says they found more than 277,000 questionable ballots were mailed this election year in L.A. County.
That’s 63% of all the questionable ballots mailed statewide.
It includes more than 4,800 duplicate ballots mailed to the same person, and 728 ballots mailed to people who likely have died.
In 2016 our investigation found hundreds of dead voters still registered. Now four years later there are more.
County registrar Dean Logan says they try to clean up the voting rolls but always want to err on the side of caution.
“When you’re talking about removing someone’s right to vote, that’s something we take seriously and that strikes to the integrity of the election,” said Logan.
The registrar’s office has always maintained that questionable ballots are a very small amount compared to the millions of people registered. And they claim they do check signatures and look for duplicate votes.
20 million registered voters in California. So that's about 1.3% questionable ballots in one county.
