As a rule I try not respond to letters to The Signal, even when I am called out by name. My experience in dealing with the right is that facts are at best inconvenient and get in the way of their “feelings.” However, if a letter makes me laugh out loud I do feel compelled to respond. Glenda Roybal’s letter on Aug. 21 filled me with mirth. And imagine poor Arthur Saginian, being lumped in with me. The man must be mortified.
Ms. Roybal presents a word salad of feelings and beliefs, with very little of substance to back it up. Basically, because I cannot prove that fraud does not exist, ergo, fraud must exist. Honestly, I never said fraud does not exist. With millions of people voting in tens of thousands of precincts, it stands to reason some mistakes, even fraud, happens, but the numbers are so infinitesimal as to have no impact of the outcome of elections. Don’t believe me, the Heritage Foundation’s own study of non-citizen voting fraud showed 68 cases nationwide, since 2000. Not sure what percent that works out to but if your bank offers a similar rate for a CD, don’t take it. Voting fraud is simply not a problem.
And I would further state that what little fraud does take place, in the aggregate, it cancels out. I can point to a number of convicted fraudsters who were Republicans. Write me for the list. And any number of so called “filings” by Ms. Roybal in the course of her poll watching does not change that. A filing would require a government response, in writing, addressing her concerns. Ms. Roybal does not include those responses in her letter. While I would never characterize her statements as lies, given her highly partisan viewpoints and that we have only her side I am inclined to dismiss her letter as so much partisan rhetoric. And this opinion is buttressed by the other parts of her letter that can be empirically analyzed.
Ms. Roybal shows her partisan bias when she talks of recent elections. It is an article of faith by the MAGA multitude that their candidates lose because of the counting of late ballots. In speaking of the governor’s recall, she states that 148,000 ballots were rejected, and while she admits this doesn’t prove “fraud or corruption,” it does call for “tough questions.”
Well OK, but well over 90,000 of those ballots came in after seven days, so by law they don’t get counted. Pretty much all the rest were errors or omissions of signatures. Since I have personally walked to cure those kinds of ballots I can honestly say every effort is made to make that ballot whole. Sometimes that is just not possible. That is very unfortunate but that is the law. Why would something that is pretty easy to verify troubling? Ms. Roybal doesn’t say.
She cites Mike Garcia in 2024, being ahead early in the count, only to see George Whitesides overtake him. In Ms. Roybal’s telling, this is highly suspicious. This of course is nonsense. Every study I have read says more Democrats vote by mail than Republicans. As is their right. They mail their vote by election day, as is their right. Those ballots arrived, often, after election day but within the seven-day window. Again, nothing suspicious and easily verified.
In 2024, 41% of the registered voters in the 27th Congressional District were Democrats, as opposed to 30% registered Republicans. If more Democrats vote by mail, and there are more Democrats in the district, it stands to reason that once all the ballots are in, George Whitesides would be the odds-on favorite to win. What made it close is 2024 was, overall, a Republican year. Mike Garcia was always on borrowed time and in 2024 the demographics caught up with him. There is nothing “suspicious” about this. It is simply analytics. I know it drives the Republicans in this district crazy, but the demographic shift in this valley has been pronounced and their good old days when the House election would be between two Republican candidates (as in 2014) are long past.
Similarly Ms. Roybal can’t understand how Spencer Pratt could be leading (or in second place) on election day and then, “troublingly,” he falls to third once those late ballots start arriving. The city of Los Angeles has a voter registration of 55% Democrat. The likelihood of any Republican cracking the top two in a vibrant blue city like Los Angeles is always going to be unlikely. Pratt’s only chance of making the general election would have been if Karen Bass had been the overwhelming choice of L.A. Democrats, in which case he would have been beaten soundly in November, much like Steve Hilton will be in the governor’s race.
Ms. Roybal is free to compare me (and I guess Mr. Saginian) to simians with disabilities. Might I suggest she step out of her comfortable cocoon of right-wing groupthink and just do the math. I think you’ll find that far more illuminating than trying to eavesdrop on a harried poll worker.
Lynn Wright
Valencia
