Did Bruce Boyer reveal that he may have overlooked voter fraud and/or committed it himself at the Jan. 23rd Board of Supervisors meeting?
Experts believe that real election fraud remains “vanishingly rare.” Proof? Despite determined investigations and bottomless funding, the hard-right Heritage Foundation, authors of the authoritarian Project 2025, has only located 1,500 instances across the entire nation since 1982(!!!), against literally billion of ballots, to justify their story that voter fraud is rampant in America and their drafting of voter suppression legislation.
Will the 1,501st addition to their pathetic collection come from right here in Ventura County? Mr. Boyer may have thought he was just teaching us a lesson, but you and our county and state election officials will be the judge. Roll the film!
- IS A CRIME BEING DESCRIBED? We’re not lawyers. We’re not election experts. But something just doesn’t sit right. Here are references we think should be looked at.
- California: Voter registration has its own section in CA law and there are very specific requirements for filling out a card correctly. We’re fans of Cal. Elec. Code § 18101, (“Every person who knowingly and willfully completes…in whole or in part…a voter registration card, with the intent to cause the registration… of a fictitious person…is guilty of a crime.”
- Federal: Title 52 of the United States Code deals with “Voting and Elections.” We like 52 U.S.C. § 20511(2)(A) “A person…knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair…election process…by submission of voter registration applications that are known by the person to be materially false… under the laws of the State in which the election is held;” More information about these laws here: “Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses“, (pg. 58)
- HEY, WAS THAT ONE VIOLATION OR TWO? Is it weird that a Mr. Boyer, a gentleman who ran for “Clerk of Elections” and who stated that he lived to stop crime, not only DID NOT REPORT HIS NEIGHBOR FOR A VIOLATION OF CA ELECTION LAWS, but copied him completely – right down to using that neighbor’s address? His gleeful performance at the meeting may also encourage others to follow in his footsteps, not realizing that they could be committing a criminal offense.
- WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW?: Report this, of course. With or without your own conclusions, write a little blurb saying that you’re concerned about something you heard at a public meeting and ask that it be investigated. At the very least, we will all be further educated on election law.
- Include the date of the Ventura County meeting (01/23/24),
- the video links:
- WHERE SHOULD I REPORT THIS?
- Ventura County Clerk-Recorder-Registrar of Voters: (805) 654-2664, elections@ventura.org
- Ventura County District Attorney here
- CA State Elections Division, go here
- Online report: https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/election-voter-complaint-form
- Downloadable form: Election Voter Complaint Form – English (PDF)
- Downloadable form: Election Voter Complaint Form – Spanish (PDF)
- Election Fraud Investigation Unit : English: (916) 657-2166 or (800) 345-VOTE (8683), Spanish: (800) 232-VOTA (8682)
- Federal: Election Crimes Branch/Public Integrity Section: phone: (202) 514-1412. Email: Criminal.Division@usdoj.gov
- WHY BOTHER?
- People posturing about the ease of voter fraud is all in the service of amplifying the lie that voter fraud is widespread. That and fear of the BIG LIE makes people believe that voting, a basic right of citizenship, needs to be even harder and more restrictive to access.
- Many believers of election fraud demand a “return” to hand-counting votes, which is not allowed in CA in areas with more than 5000 voters. Not surprisingly for anyone who’s survived a mind-numbing job, handcounting is actually less accurate, more expensive and WAY slower than scanning. In Arizona, “It took the Cyber Ninja crew two months to hand count Maricopa Count’s ballots in the 2020 election and another four to figure out who won. Even then, the auditors were counting only two races — president and U.S. Senate — out of dozens on the ballot. And still they couldn’t come up with an accurate tally.” Scanners “are very good at tedious, repetitive tasks. Humans are bad at them.”
- Many want us to return to single-day voting, which advantages those who can wait in lines on weekdays over those who can’t. Many experts think that the multi-hour waits that result from often deliberately limited capacity actually violates the 14th Amendment.
- Those who believe that mail-in ballots are ripe for corruption are easy targets for stories that 28 million “missing” ballots signify fraud.
- Some think voting on more than one day is unconstitutional. However, the Fifth U.S. Court of Appeals decided in Voting Integrity Project, Inc. v. Bomar that the act of voting and the counting of votes (i.e. “the election”) are two different things entirely. Therefore early voting does not violate federal election laws.
- Support the elections officials who’ve worked incredibly hard to create safe and secure elections. Mark Lunn, the former Ventura County Registrar of Voters who endorsed Michelle Ascension to replace him, spoke to Spectrum News 1 about the locked-down security systems that Ventura County uses. Great video is included.
- People posturing about the ease of voter fraud is all in the service of amplifying the lie that voter fraud is widespread. That and fear of the BIG LIE makes people believe that voting, a basic right of citizenship, needs to be even harder and more restrictive to access.
- EXTRA CREDIT: Go to meetings where voting is discussed. Otherwise, the only voices are from election integrity deniers – both those sincerely concerned about voter fraud because they’ve been dipped in FOX conspiracies for years, and the cynical operatives who just want to lower voter access for the opposition. They will ALWAYS show up to spread their nonsense.
Check out Ventura Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters Michelle Ascencion’s 4-part Election Education Series here.
Deeper Dive
The Heritage Foundation, whose database is often included in election integrity discussions, is the right-wing, Christian Nationalist think tank behind the authoritarian “Project 2025,” set to spring shut like a bear trap if Trump, or any member of the GOP wins the presidency.
They are a major driver, besides Trump himself, of the lie that voter fraud is HUGE in America. They describe their database as “a sampling of recent proven instances of election fraud” – 1,500 total for all national, state and local elections and literally billions of votes. “Recent” actually means starting from 1982, more than 40 years ago. The man in charge of the database, Hans von Spakovsky, is also the author of the Project 2025 chapter on how they plan to “reform” the Federal Election Commission (FEC) once they get into power.
Von Spakovsky brought his database along when he was appointed to Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Their job was to investigate voter fraud, and hopefully provide some backup for his butthurt claims that millions voted illegally in 2016 to cost him the popular vote. However, “the task force disbanded seven months after its first meeting with no report substantiating fraud. The White House blamed the potential cost of lawsuits and uncooperative states for the failure to produce evidence of widespread voter fraud.” However, their failure came as no surprise to the Brennan Center.
(Brennan Center) “Claims that the Heritage Foundation document contains almost 1,100 proven instances of voter fraud are grossly exaggerated and devoid of context, Brennan Center researchers found. It confirms what numerous studies have consistently shown: Voter fraud is vanishingly rare, and impersonating a voter at the polls is less common a phenomenon than being struck by lightning.“
The Heritage Foundation is sad that the Brennan Center thinks their database is a load of hooey and we are happy to link to the Heritage Foundation’s response. They want you to know that their database is not a complete list but “mere “sampling” and “not an exhaustive list.” They claim that it “is continually being updated as new cases are discovered and vetted—[and it] is the bottom floor of possible fraud, not the ceiling, which in all likelihood is much higher.”
The Heritage Foundation has no compunction however, against conflating the uncertainty of their “samples” into definite voter suppression tactics.
Resources
- (Protect Democracy) What is the Big Lie?
- (PBS) Here’s Why Concerns About Absentee Ballot Fraud Are Overhyped
- (guardian) Dark money groups push election denialism on US state officials
- (Brennan Center) Heritage Fraud Database: An Assessment
- (Brennan Center) Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth
- (Brennan Center) Analysis: Heritage Foundation’s Database Undermines Claims of Recent Voter Fraud
- (motherjones) Leaked Video: Dark Money Group Brags About Writing GOP Voter Suppression Bills Across the Country “We did it quickly and we did it quietly,” said the executive director of Heritage Action.
- (Snopes) Did 28 Million Mail-In Ballots Go ‘Missing’ in Last Four Elections?
- (Heritage Foundation) A Sampling of Recent Election Fraud Cases from Across the United States
- (Heritage Foundation) Brennan Center’s Attacks on Heritage Voter Fraud Database Are Baseless
- (Brownpoliticalreview) Long Lines to Vote Are Unconstitutional
- (Wired) Why Are Lines at Polling Places So Long? Math. It’s a resource allocation problem, a tough challenge in “queueing theory.” It’s also racism.
- (NPR) Hand-counting ballots may sound nice. It’s actually less accurate and more expensive
- (the conversation) Paper ballots are good, but accurately hand-counting them all is next to impossible
- (wytv.com) Ohio voters will have less time to cast early ballot this election
- (abc news) Bill limiting ballot hand counting in California becomes law; one county pledges to defy statute
- (azcentral) Hand counting ballots in Arizona? Did our Legislature learn nothing from the Cyber Ninjas? Opinion: The Arizona Legislature passed a bill to allow counties to hand count ballots in future elections. It’s a great plan, if you’re not worried about accurate or timely results.
INDIVISIBLE VENTURA 