Welcome To Republican Party San Luis Obispo County

APRIL 18, 2021

PALM BEACH, FL

Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America.

I wish Joe Biden wouldn’t use September 11th as the date to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, for two reasons. First, we can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long. I made early withdraw possible by already pulling much of our billions of dollars of equipment out and, more importantly, reducing our military presence to less than 2,000 troops from the 16,000 level that was there (likewise in Iraq, and zero troops in Syria except for the area where we KEPT THE OIL). Secondly, September 11th represents a very sad event and period for our Country and should remain a day of reflection and remembrance honoring those great souls we lost. Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.

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FAIR AND HONEST ELECTIONS – One View Point

Chair Compton and Board Members:

You have before you Registrar Gong’s Report and Request to Choose Now between precinct voting and vote center voting for the 2021 and 2022 elections.

1. Before acting on the Registrar’s request to choose between precinct and vote center voting, this Board should obtain a full report on its current voting machine system and alternatives to it. The Board would be shirking its duty to make sure SLO County elections have the highest integrity if it simply endorses one of these two options now.

2. The Board should not take any action today on Mr. Gong’s request to choose between two alternative methods of voting without a full report on the current voting machine system, including alternatives, including one that would mandate the hand counting of all ballots.

The specific item on the Agenda for the Registrar’s Report is to obtain Board direction on whether the county should conduct 2021 and 2022 elections using precincts or vote centers. However, the real backdrop — the “dog that isn’t barking” in this situation — is the question of whether the current state-mandated election rules prevent local election officials from using tried-and-true voting methods that assure accuracy and allay real concerns about election integrity.

In the early 2000s, citizens on the Left had many good faith questions about the integrity of elections. Some of their concerns were misplaced. However, out of that protest, and followup investigation, came the adoption of voter verified paper trails for ballots cast on electronic voting machines. Except for use for handicapped accessible voting, those electronic machines were put back in the warehouse and replaced with good old paper ballots.

In the 2020 election, after dozens of changes mandated by our very partisan Legislature from 2016-2019, many traditional voting integrity protections were shelved. In 2018, even though federal litigation which I was involved resulted in a consent agreement requiring the Secretary of State and LA County’s Registrar to clean dead wood off the voter rolls (and at least 5 million voter names were suspect), in our Legislature’s 2016 laws were implemented to automatically register to vote everyone who went to DMV for a drivers license or identity card, including some non-citizens, and to promote all mail elections. As a result, Mail ballots were sent to everyone on the voter rolls, even though the cleaning of the existing voter rolls mandated by the federal consent agreement had not been implemented.

After the last election, citizens on the Right had similar concerns to those of the early 2000s, yet the Legislature has doubled down on carrying forward without any honest investigation of real concerns. The new Secretary of State is carrying on in the manner of her predecessor, who went to the U.S. Senate denying any responsibility for past problems.

2. After the Secretary of State promulgated emergency regulations making it virtually impossible for election officials to reject a voter’s signature on vote-by-mail ballots, election officials hands were tied, and virtually no such ballots with questionable signatures were rejected. Was this because in the past our election officials erred in rejecting ballots, or did the Secretary of State’s regulations frustrate election officials’ ability to do their job? Mr. Gong’s report is silent on this.

3. Restoring integrity to voting by mail is vital and requires (a) mailing ballots only to those who have requested them; (b) restoring bona fide signature checking to reduce fraud potential; (c) using technology to assist but making sure all pre-election and post-election testing verifications are satisfactory, and (d) not just punting the question of election integrity by giving the Registrar a blank check or sitting silently by while the Legislature corrupts the voting process for partisan advantage.

Charles H. Bell, Jr.

1649 Helena Street

Arroyo Grande, CA 93420