Gascon Recall Effort Fails as Registrar Throws out 196K Signatures

In a stunning blow to residents of crime-ridden Los Angeles, the Recall Gascon effort has failed to qualify for the November ballot after having almost 200,000 petition signatures deemed invalid by the LA County Registrar-Recorder. In a press release issued Monday, they wrote: “Petition found insufficient to qualify the recall for the ballot.”

LA County Registrar-Recorder finds petition to recall Gascon “insufficient.”
Source: Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk

Soros-backed District Attorney George Gascon has wreaked havoc on Los Angeles with his affinity for criminals and his disdain for victims. The recall effort gathered 715,833 signatures, but Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan has found a stunning 195,783 to be invalid for a variety of reasons. To qualify, 566,587 signatures needed to be found valid, but in the end, only 520,050 were allowed, leaving the effort 46,537 short.

Qualifying for the ballot was the most important part of the recall process. As KABC radio host John Phillips explained today:

The stakes were so high with this because everyone knew, given the polling that’s been produced, if this thing qualified for the ballot, he was gone. He knew that. We knew that. The County Registrar knew that. If he was going to beat this recall attempt, he had to do it in the signature-gathering phase, because there was no other option for him.

We’ve never seen a vetting this thorough from LA County. They don’t clean up their voter rolls with this level of detail BEFORE they send out the ballots….

But they toss out more than 1/4 of the Gascon Recall signatures? @DCLogan is a partisan he/him/his. https://t.co/eb2I0Gk9GP

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) August 15, 2022

Many predicted this outcome, assuming that LA’s powers-that-be would find some way to discount enough signatures. To be clear, this stinks to high heaven.

For starters, as RedState’s Kira Davis reported, monitors were not allowed to watch the count, apparently in violation of the law. How can we have any faith in a count that occurred in the dark? We can’t. Logan has a history of scandals and was accused of “stealing” the Washington governor’s race in 2004 by miraculously finding more votes in a recount. He resigned in 2006 from the King’s County, Washington election board over a “toxic environment.”

Here’s the breakdown of what Registrar Logan found wrong according to the press release:

Not Registered: 88,464
Max Number of Times Signed (Duplicate): 43,593
Different Address: 32,187
Mismatch Signature: 9,490
Canceled: 7,344
Out of County Address: 5,374
Other: 9,331

What the heck is “other,” I wonder? It also seems odd that 32,000 people have a “different address.” I would also venture to guess that they were pretty strict about the mismatched signatures. “Oh, that one looks a little off,” I can hear them saying, “Toss it.” As many Recall Gascon supporters have pointed out, the Registrar was clearly not using the very loose standards of signature matching that’s been the norm in California’s COVID-justified mail-in-ballots-for-all elections.

Supporters of the recall do have the ability to examine the signatures, according to the statement:

The RR/CC has notified the proponents of these findings. Per California Elections Code § 11301 and Government Code § 6253.5, proponents of the recall petition may examine the petition signatures if desired, provided that such examination must commence no later than 21 days after the certification of insufficiency of the petition.

In reaction, organizers have vowed to fight back. LA City Councilman and Co-Chair of the recall Dennis Zine spoke to KABC’s Phillips and said:

Very sad news, but I would not say it’s a big surprise, knowing how the Registrar has orchestrated this particular situation….

We were banned from observing any of the activities in the count. We were on the outside. Obviously, we are going to deal with this through the legal process and not just roll over and say it’s okay. There are a lot of victims out there who are outraged.

RedState has reported extensively on Gascon’s misdeeds, you can read it all here. In sum, however, he has been notoriously lax in prosecuting criminals and has let many out who have gone on to commit violent felonies. Here are just a couple of his lowlights:

There are many, many more stories, and now apparently the list will grow if we end up stuck with him. It’s truly a dark day for Los Angeles.

UPDATE Monday 8/15 4:30 PST: Recall DA George Gascon campaign statement:

While the initial results are surprising and disappointing, the Recall Committee intends to exercise its full statutory and legal authority to review the rejected signatures and verification process that took place, and will ultimately seek to ensure no voter was disenfranchised.

Nonetheless, according to the Registrar-Recorder, over half a million residents placed valid signatures on a petition to initiate the recall of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon. To deprive them of the opportunity to restore public safety in their own communities is heartbreaking. And to interpret this in any other way other than a wholesale rejection of Gascon’s dangerous polices would be disingenuous, or naive at best. The over half a million signatures are in addition to 37 cities voting no confidence in the District Attorney, and over 98% of Gascon’s own prosecutors supporting the recall.

The removal of George Gascon from office has never been a matter of if, but when. The citizens of Los Angeles cannot afford another two years of Gascon unleashing havoc on their streets – people’s lives are at stake.

– The Recall DA George Gascon Campaign