Reform Coalition Gets $20K Grant from Jarvis Association

The Long Beach Reform Coalition (LBRC) announced that it is the recipient of a $20,000 grant for upcoming litigation against Los Angeles County. LBRC recently took the lead on the recount of Long Beach Measure A, which was certified as having passed with a 16-vote margin out of approximately 100,000 votes cast. "Unfortunately, that recount became a charade as LA Co. Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan used the flaws in his new VSAP voting system to obstruct the process and terminate it before completion," said Ian Patton, LBRC executive director.
 
"Unbelievably, the design for the $300 million VSAP system, custom-developed for LA County and ten years in the making, apparently did not account for recounts, what ought to be one of the most basic functions of an election system. By taking millions of ballots, which used to be pre-sorted by jurisdiction according to polling place, and instead mixing them all together, VSAP has rendered a manual recount – in other words a human, paper trail audit – of the original machine count an extreme logistical challenge," Patton said in a news release.
 
"By attempting to charge the recount requestor for the cost of this multi-week ‘ballot retrieval’ process, County Clerk Logan has effectively implemented a poll tax (in other words, created a high discriminatory economic bar) for anyone but the wealthiest of campaigns or individuals to access their right to a recount under California state law. Such a policy effectively serves as a cover up for the counting flaws inherent in the VSAP system, as a full recount would (and the partial recount process had already begun to)  reveal inaccuracies in the original machine count.
 
"It is for these reasons that LBRC will soon be filing suit. We are thrilled that HJTA similarly understands the significance of this effort, not just for Long Beach, not even just for LA County, but indeed for the entire State of California," Patton claiimed.
 
HJTA has provided the following statement from its president, Jon Coupal, concerning the litigation: “The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has fought for the right to vote on taxes. Essential to the exercise of that right is the need to have confidence that every vote was counted, and counted accurately.”
 
"Thanks to the support of HJTA, locally to the LBRC-affiliate Citizens About Responsible Planning (CARP), and to over 300 individual donors, specifically contributing toward our recount efforts in recent weeks, LBRC will be soon be announcing the filing of and details concerning a lawsuit against Los Angeles County," Patton said.
 
 

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