Election Integrity Top Of Mind For Riverside County Officials, Some Voters

With less than one month to go until Election Day, members of the Riverside Election Integrity Team have some concerns.

“We’ve been talking with the county since probably last year,” Greg Langworthy, a Riverside County resident and REIT member, said. “They began to say, ‘Hey, you’ve got some legitimate complaints here. You’ve got some unanswered questions.’”

Last month, some members of the group, composed of concerned Riverside County residents, attended a workshop with supervisors Karen Spiegel and V. Manuel Perez along with Registrar of Voters (ROV) Art Tinoco.

“I do believe it was the most unusual format for a meeting, but because it wasn’t an ad hoc and it wasn’t a board meeting, we had a little flexibility, and it was a rare opportunity,” Spiegel said of the meeting that she characterized as a healthy discussion on an important topic. “We had a smaller group, and I think it was very productive.”

During that meeting, Tinoco was able to give a presentation about the work the ROV was doing to ensure a transparent, fair and accurate election this November and hear feedback from concerned voters about the process. 

“I get the message that we need to work on a lot of processes, I’m very open to that,” Tinoco said at the meeting. “This is an opportunity, really, for not only myself, but the department, to be able to grow and make things a lot better as we move into the future.”

One week later, REIT delivered a list of five suggestions for the ROV that it hoped would be implemented ahead of the November election in order to ensure its validity.

“We’re giving suggestions,” Langworthy said. “We know the problem, and [Tinoco] has to come up with a solution to the problem.”

Those five suggestions included changing the way the ROV receives ballots from the United States Postal Service, requiring potentially ineligible voters to vote provisionally or cure their ballots, using a signature verification tool to detect potential fraud, making post-election reconciliation information available for public inspection and having county tech workers inspect the voting machines. Spiegel said she was surprised by the request.

“The reality is, I told them at that meeting that it was less than two months before the election when we had that meeting, and that [Tinoco] had a full presidential election to take care of, and we wanted to keep him focused on the training and all the other aspects,” she said. “So when this came on [Sept. 26], which is 15 days later, I was very surprised.”

Langworthy said he hoped that supervisors would at least put the item on the agenda for open discussion ahead of the election.

“Our concern is it’s one thing to admit the problems, it’s another thing to take action,” he said.

But while both Spiegel and Tinoco said they were grateful for the discussion with members of REIT, they said there was not really a way for changes to be made to the process this close to the election.

“There’s really a lot of legwork that needs to be done prior to being able to implement something that is new to this county,” Tinoco said. “But overall, most definitely these recommendations as given are greatly appreciated, and we will consider them as we move into the future in this case.”

He went on to say that the ROV not only follows all state laws when it comes to administering an election, but also conducts extensive training with employees ahead of the election to ensure the accuracy of the election.

Spiegel said she would like to continue the conversation with REIT, but noted that many of the group’s concerns with how elections are run are due to state laws.

“I think we need to keep encouraging them to go to the California [State] Legislature, where those laws can be changed,” she said. “Our job is to follow the laws that they implement, and at the end of the election process, I just want Riverside County residents to feel confident that each and every vote has been counted in a timely manner and that this has been a fair and transparent election.”

Both Spiegel and Tinoco said they were confident in the ability of the ROV to administer a transparent, fair and accurate election next month.

“The ROV team and myself are extremely confident that we will have a successful election,” Tinoco said. “We’re definitely looking forward to the election…especially considering that this election will be extremely important to our constituents, not only in Riverside County, but throughout the nation.”

In an effort to make the process even more transparent, the ROV will again open its office for election observer tours. Starting tomorrow, tours will be offered at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday throughout the election process. The ROV will also, once again, livestream ballot processing on its YouTube channel.