Los Angeles County officials said voter irregularity or fraud is very uncommon. The I-Team’s Lolita Lopez reports for the NBC4 News at 6 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024.
Even before millions of Americans have yet to cast their ballot in the general election, the claims of possible problems at vote centers and even election fraud are being spread online and on campaign trails across the country.
But Los Angeles County officials said voter irregularity or fraud is very uncommon, assuming that all ballots will be properly counted and safely handled for Tuesday’s election.
LA County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan told the I-Team that all ballots will go through many security measures to be verified and processed at a secure facility in the City of Industry Tuesday night.
“There's a lot of talk about the ability of the possibility of fraud, but especially in this period since the 2020 election, there've been multiple court cases, multiple academic studies and statistical data to show it's just very rare that it happens,” Logan said.
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According to the I-Team’s analyst of voter irregularity data in Los Angeles County dating back to 2020, there were only 15 cases that were examined by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office or the California Attorney General out of millions of votes cast and verified each election year.
Among the allegations were voter registration fraud and vote-by-mail ballots being returned by someone other than the voter. In one incident, petition signers were found no longer living.
“When we get that information, we turn that over to law enforcement, and then it's sort of in their hands to look into that,” Logan said. “The consequences of doing that are very extreme. Those are felony charges. We take them very seriously, and our law enforcement agencies take them very seriously as well.”
One of the voter fraud cases was from the city of Compton when then-City Councilmember Isaac Galvan was removed from office for having people, who did not live in Compton, vote for him. A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge overturned the election and declared Andrea Spicer won the election by three votes.
Galvan and others were charged by the LA County District Attorney related to the incident.
Three defendants, who pleaded guilty to the charge of registering a voter not entitled to vote, were scheduled for sentencing, according to the DA’s Office.
Galvan and one other defendant, who previously pleaded not guilty, were scheduled for a court hearing in November, said an official from the DA’s Office.
The I-Team reached out to Galvan’s attorney about the case but did not receive a response.
Data from the California Secretary of State also showed allegations of voter fraud were exceptionally rare. During the 2020 presidential election, the state reported 48 allegations out of almost 18 million ballots cast.
The best way to ensure the mail-in-ballots are in the right hands is to sign up for an alert system run by the state to receive automatic email, text or voice call notifications. Sign up for the ballot tracker here.
