LOS ANGELES — County election officials on Wednesday asked the state Attorney General’s Office to review alleged irregularities in the collection of petition signatures in a recent effort to recall District Attorney George Gascón and in support of a state ballot initiative, saying they found evidence that dead people were among the petition signers.
“Based on our review of two recent petitions — one a countywide recall petition and the other a statewide initiative petition — my office has identified irregularities that suggest the possibility of fraudulent signature submission that I believe may warrant investigation,” Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said in a statement.
According to Logan’s office, a review of the petitions submitted in a failed attempt to recall Gascón last year determined that 367 of the submitted signatures were those of people who had died before the signature-gathering period even began.
On a separate petition last year in support of a state ballot initiative aimed at limiting the taxation ability of state and local governments, the county allegedly found 344 signatures of people who were dead before the petitioning process had begun.
The Gascón recall effort fell short last year, with the county determining that organizers had submitted only 520,050 valid petition signatures, well short of the required 566,857.
Organizers of the recall had submitted a total of 715,833 petition signatures to the county Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office in an effort to force Gascón into a recall election. County officials initially conducted a random sampling of the signatures to verify their validity.
(1) comment
There are probably double the signatures needed to recall Gascon...Take a close look at the Person Verifying the signatures
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