Trump s big lie is alive and well in California
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California Secretary of State Shirley Weber says GOP agitators who believe former President Donald Trump’s lie about election fraud are making jobs harder for counties’ voter registrars.Salgu Wissmath / Special to The Chronicle
Californians shouldn’t look at voter suppression as something happening only in faraway states, like Georgia, Texas and Florida. A more subtle, insidious form of the fallout from Donald Trump’s big lie about widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential race is permeating California.
The lie is gaining enough traction to alarm voting officials, starting with California Secretary of State Shirley Weber. She’s met with nearly every county registrar of voters since taking office in February, and many told her that right-wing agitators are making their job more difficult.
File Photo By Jayson Mellom
DRAWING QUICK LINES Delayed 2020 Census data is impacting state and local redistricting efforts this year, which is putting pressure on the 2022 primary election. Delays in the 2020 census are spilling into the nationwide redistricting process, which in turn is creating a time crunch for the 2022 elections. The U.S. s once-a-decade population survey, typically released to the states sometime between March and May the year after it s conducted, isn t expected to be ready this year until October, thanks to COVID-19 and other complications. That roughly six-month delay leaves states and localities with much less time to redraw their electoral district boundaries an already contentious process wrapped in political interests and implications. With a June 2022 primary election around the corner, simply extending the redistricting timeline is problematic, as it could postpone the election.
San Luis Obispo County is ditching the election model it used for last November s presidential election amid COVID-19 and reverting to its old model going forward, following a contentious, late-hour 3-2 vote by the Board of Supervisors on May 4. click to enlarge File Photo
ELECTION DEBATE The SLO County Board of Supervisors voted on May 4 to use an older election model for future contests. The decision which came at 11:30 p.m. after nearly four hours of public comment means that polling places for future SLO County elections will be open only on Election Day, and mail-in ballots will be delivered only to those who request them, unless state law requires otherwise.
In a 3-2 vote, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors decided May 4 to move forward with using polling places instead of voter service centers for
Cover Design by Alex Zuniga Everybody knows that the COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest story of 2020, with social and political tensions coming in a very close second and almost certainly intertwined with the pandemic. Although California also had another record fire season in 2020, SLO County thankfully didn t. The happiest county on the California coast made national news several times this past year with SLO County Sheriff Ian Parkinson s and District Attorney Dan Dow s stance against Black Lives Matter protesters and COVID-19 regulations, the arrest and prosecution of protest leader Tianna Arata, and COVID-19 positive case numbers taking up the bulk of that national attention. Local residents seemed to take issue with everything facing each other in the streets with protests and anti-protests, bickering online in divergent Facebook groups and catty Instagram stories, shouting about COVID