Santa Clara County Addresses Trump’s Election-Rigging Claims

Santa Clara County election officials on Wednesday addressed Donald Trump’s conspiratorial rhetoric about fraud and rigged elections, assuring the public that they can trust the integrity of the vote.

“The idea that one could, in any way, affect the national vote tally with any kind of illegal action is just absurd,” County Executive Jeff Smith said.

Trump repeated allegations of voter fraud during Wednesday night’s presidential debate, and even refused to say whether or not he would concede if defeated. The Republican nominee has been telling supporters to sign up as poll watchers.

County Supervisor Dave Cortese said the violence that broke out at Trump’s rally in San Jose over the summer has raised concerns of voter intimidation. “We’re wise to what’s going on,” Cortese said. “We’re wise to the fact that people might agitate.”

While officials said they don’t expect any problems in this county, they urged voters to alert them if they feel harassed or bullied at a polling station.

Also on Wednesday, Secretary of State Alex Padilla issued a statement calling Trump’s allegations reckless and alarmist.

“We will not play into the narrative of any candidate who seeks to suppress the vote by undermining the public’s confidence in free and fair elections,” Padilla wrote. “I have great faith in our county elections officials and the thousands of poll workers who volunteer to assist voters in their community.”

County election staffers and 5,000 volunteers spent a little more time this year discussing potential intimidators, Registrar of Voters Shannon Bushey said. They’ve been told to keep an eye out for harassment and make sure people with campaign signs stay at least 100 feet away from polling stations.

Bushey encouraged anyone with questions about the election process to observe the ballot counting in person. The county routinely updates its voter registration lists to weed out people who have died or moved away, she said.

County election officials anticipate that 85 percent of registered voters will cast a ballot Nov. 8. More than 70 percent of them requested a mail-in ballot, which comes with free postage but could also be dropped off at several locations throughout the county.

The deadline to register to vote is Monday.

Santa Clara County election workers sort mail-in ballots. (Photo by Jennifer Wadsworth)

Santa Clara County election workers sort mail-in ballots. (Photo by Jennifer Wadsworth)

Jennifer Wadsworth is the former news editor for San Jose Inside and Metro Silicon Valley. Follow her on Twitter at @jennwadsworth.

31 Comments

  1. Not only do we have low information voters in this country, we have low information election officials and low information journalists.

    Don’t they know?

    Answer: No. They don’t know.

    > ““The idea that one could, in any way, affect the national vote tally with any kind of illegal action is just absurd,” County Executive Jeff Smith said.

    What an absurd County Executive.

  2. The history of Ms. Bushey’s “leadership” of the SCC ROV has been one of complete ineptitude. She and her minions can’t even get results out on election day. And we’re supposed to believe she can stop voter fraud with a bunch of volunteers? How she has kept her job is beyond understanding.

    • There’s a huge effort in SF now to register homeless people, many of whom have no ID, since a liberal federal judge ruled that photo ID is unnecessary in order to register to vote. Hillary’s people are taking one from Obama’s peoples’ bag of tricks just to make sure.

      • Yes, the system is totally rigged. But in California it no longer matters; all of this state’s electoral votes are already in the tank for HRC.

        It’s the close states, counties, and precincts that really matter — and the DNC has been perfecting its voter fraud scheme in those places since before Obama’s first election.

        Want evidence? Just ask, I’ve got the links right here…

    • You are absolutely correct Julie. It amazes me when I go to vote and pull out my wallet everytime and they tell me, ‘oh, no you don’t have to show identification.’ Mainstream media and the Socialist Democrates will probably get what they want. We are going the way of Europe. I have had many conversations with visiting tourists and they all give the same speech: Don’t do what our countries have done, we are doomed.

    • Several states allow a person to pick up and leave with as many blank voter registration forms as they want, then turn them in later all filled out, with no check whatsoever of the information contained in them and no verification other than a signature under the penalty of perjury.

    • I don’t get it Bubbles. You recently have referred to the “upcoming Trump presidency” in confident tones. So which is it? Is it “upcoming” or will Trump be robbed through a rigged process? Is it even possible he will lose fair and square? Are you confident you know what will happen or do you admit to being unsure? Will you get to say “I told you so” the day after the election, whichever way it goes? Enquiring minds want to know.

      • > So which is it? Is it “upcoming” or will Trump be robbed through a rigged process?

        Still very much a rigged process, but chances are Trump will prevail, It’s possible for Trump to lose, but not “fair and square.”

        The outcome of the election is still very open although the dominant media (e.g.,”The Mercury News”) are featuring five or ten anti-Trump stories EVERY DAY. They are pulling out all the stops and are clearly worried that they might not be able to push the unlikeable and crooked Hillary over the finish line.

        No one likes Hillary. You don’t even like Hillary. And Hillary doesn’t like you either. She’s a nasty person.

        I am 100% certain that after the election, no matter who wins, people will believe the election was rigged.

        • Your predictions have a carnival fortune teller flavor to them, Bubbles. “No matter who wins, people will believe the election was rigged?” Ok, but will they be correct? Sounds like you are saying if Hillary wins, they will be correct. But if Trump wins, then what? Yes it was rigged but not well enough? Or no it was not rigged? Plus you are an amateur mind reader too — I apparently “don’t like Hillary,” for example.

          Let me take a shot at amateurish carnival soothsaying — (1) you are white, (2) you are male, (3) you think you are smarter than the average bear, (4) you think you have a gift for irony, (5) you have a mysterious belief you are not mainstream, (6) you spent some time in the military, (7) you think Ayn Rand was a visionary, (8) you currently do not work full time, (9) if you ever served on a jury, the case deadlocked after you irritated other jurors in order to get attention, (10) and so on.

          Did I miss a couple?

          • > “No matter who wins, people will believe the election was rigged?”

            Do you accept the results of the 2000 election, or do you believe that George W. Bush was “selected not elected”?

            If you accept the 2000 election, you are “not mainstream” among Democrats.

          • Mexicano2,

            I think you have now brilliantly made our point. If we want to believe election are not rigged in this country,
            the following must take place.

            1; Citizenship and residency must be established and confirmed for a voter/drivers/ ID.

            2; Everyone wishing to vote must have one.

            3; Before every national election all voters must re-register, registration rolls be purged of names dead or persons that
            have moved to a new location.

            4; People caught cheating the system get a mandatory one year sentence for each conviction.
            Public officials the get caught get 5 years enhancement and weekend work cleaning roads and public restrooms.

            I think maybe then my vote might count!

  3. “Obama amnesty creates loophole for illegal immigrants to vote in elections”

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/12/obama-amnesty-creates-loophole-for-illegal-immigra/

    “Only four states require proof of citizenship before someone registers to vote, Mr. Kobach said. And even in those states, the federal government offers voter registration cards that don’t require proof of citizenship, giving determined illegal immigrants a way to circumvent checks.”

    Poll: 13% of Illegal Aliens ADMIT They Vote
    http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/poll-13-of-illegal-aliens-admit-they-vote/

  4. First, I denounce the City Council. Of course their is voting registration fraud. You can’t trust the Democratics, and as far as the violence at Trump rallies, the information is already out there regarding the disruption tactics of the Democratics. These are an evil people, literally holding up an evil women.

    • Agreed. People close their minds to the truth for different reasons I guess..I’m hoping this changes before its too late. The Clinton’s have proved time and time again just how evil and self-serving they are.

    • The Washington Mall shooter was not a citizen but voted anyway, as a non citizen he was also not allowed to have a gun. Funny how that works! So much for background checks.

      • And Homeland Security says it vets Syrian “refugees”. They have outsourced the vetting to the UN. That means everybody gets in.

  5. H.R. Clinton and her pet DNC refuse to discuss any substantive issues, like vote rigging, or her sale of America’s uranium stockpile to Russia when she was Secretary of State, or the current election fraud, or the huge and illegal influx of foreigners, or her decades-long cover-up of a serial rapist, or the millions of non-citizens who are voting in this election, etc., etc.

    In fact, Hillary always avoids discussing any of her Policy positions!

    Why is that? It’s because most Americans strongly DISAGREE with HRC, on almost every policy issue she supports.

    For example, most voters strongly disagree with HRC’s plans to completely “dissolve” <–(her own word) our U.S. borders. And with her plan to open immigration to any citizen of a foreign country who is here illegally "within the first 100 days" of her election. And so on.

    And on the rare occasion when something like Mr. T's 'guy talk' is found, they act like it's unusual or wrong, rather than what it was: a private conversation between two guys trying to one-up each other.

    But aren't a candidates POLICIES what they should be discussing? Donald Trump discusses his policies, but HRC constantly dodges her own policy proposals.

    Among other policy changes, Donald Trump proposes to:

    • Mandate e-verify (employers must verify that those they hire are here legally)
    • Strengthen our interior enforcement (not just at our borders)
    • End visa overstays (now in the millions)
    • Re-build our demoralized military
    • End amnesty
    • Improve border enforcement
    • Reduce or eliminate federal government rewards for those here illegally
    • Build the wall!
    • Create Illegal Alien Hotline for American citizens
    • Cut off Federal Funding for ‘Sanctuary Cities’
    • Create “Sheriff Joe Prisons” for Illegal aliens convicted of committing crimes in the U.S. — beyond the crime of actually being here illegally

    What’s wrong with any of THAT?? Anyone…?

    And at the same time, HRC is desperately avoids discussing her own dismal record of failure, including her self-serving ‘war hero’ stories, and her many other fabrications (AKA: her incessant lying).

    HRC does not want any discussion regarding her lack of worthwhile accomplishments as Secretary of State (like raising her own net worth by ≈$millions; much of that loot pocketed by auctioning off her past, present, (and supposedly her future) government positions to foreign entities and foreign governments.

    But where does that leave regular American citizens, who can’t fatten the Clintons’ bank accounts with bribes like that?

    Those are the things that voters should be discussing! But HRC’s pwned Media doesn’t give those issues any oxygen. But Hillary refuses to even acknowledge her anti-American policies, because they’re way out of step with what most American voters want.

    Instead, she hides out. And her constant ad hominem attacks over a private comment are designed specifically to avoid any discussion of her anti-U.S. (and pro-UN) policies.

    The accusations about Trump are orchestrated by HRC, but they are minor compared with the sexist things that HRC herself says and does — and to a much greater degree (like paying the men on her staff more money than the women who do the same jobs). Hillary’s double-talk has been exposed repeatedly; YouTube is packed with examples. (Just ask, and I’ll post some videos showing her lying like a child.) But we never see HRC’s reprehensible words or actions reported on the television networks, where most Americans get their news.

    HRC’s campaign strategy seems to be based solely on her psychological ‘projection’: imputing her own faults onto her opponent. That might be clever. But it’s dishonest, like most everything else she says and does. Politics has often attracted dishonest people. But Hillary Clinton wins the Grand Prize in that category.

    Most folks have heard the phrase: ‘Character is Destiny’. America’s voting citizens will not put our country’s destiny into the hands of that dishonest, ethics-challenged reprobate.

    But notice that I said “American citizens”. Can you spot the loophole? Illegal non-citizen voting could change the outcome of this election. They showed how devious they’ve become, when Al Franken stole his Senate seat by using similarly outrageous election fraud tactics. I still recall when Al Franken’s incumbent opponent, Sen. Norm Coleman, won the election. But since it was so close, Franken was entitled to a preemptory challenge.

    Franken lost his challenge when Coleman won the recount. (During the first recount, an anonymous person produced very questionable boxes full of of ballots that were supposedly ‘found’ in one of the precincts that had voted overwhelmingly for Obama).

    When Franken lost the recount he challenged again, on dubious grounds (by law a close challenger is entitled to one [1] recount).

    But the (Democrat) Secretary of State and the (Democrat) Canvassing Board gave Franken another recount! And to the amazement of everyone who still believes in the Tooth Fairy, during the second recount, still more boxes of uncounted ballots were once again ‘found’ by Al Franken’s anonymous ballot box finder! And once again, there was no acceptable explanation (and the ballot box ‘finder’ remains anonymous).

    Despite the fact that no one could credibly explain all those ‘found’ ballots, they were still counted — while hundreds of absentee ballots from Coleman’s strongest districts were rejected!

    That last, partisan recount added those hundreds of mysterious ‘found’ ballots, which gave Franken his only ‘win’, by about 200 votes — only half the number that Coleman got in the election, and just half the votes Coleman got when he won the first recount. But upon the last recount Al Franken was immediately sworn in as Senator, with no more recounts allowed.

    http://tiny.cc/nbz8fy

    That’s the kind of election shenanigans and vote-rigging that Donald Trump is referring to.

    http://tiny.cc/i427fy

    And if anyone needs more evidence:

    http://tiny.cc/l3z8fy

    http://tiny.cc/nx87fy

    With a long record of Democrat election cheating, Donald Trump should be concerned.

    And so should honest Americans. But are there that many of us still around?

    We’ll see…

  6. Funny how that works, hanging chads only count for Democrats.
    What surprises me is with a straight face tell us that Republicans are some how suppressing the vote!

  7. Bubbles says — “Do you accept the results of the 2000 election?” Or something like that.

    Bubbles, as you often do, you are answering a question with a question. When people say you do X, your refrain is — but don’t dems/libs/progressives do it too?

    The question is — if Trump wins, was the election still rigged according to you? Not according to some straw man Dem, according to you.

    And by the way, yes I do accept the 2000 result. The Supreme Court cut off the recount in a way that arguably was politically motivated. But they based it on interpretation of law. It was not “rigged.” As well, George W. was not a bad man. The decision to invade Iraq was wrong, based on a faulty premise, and devastating to American lives and resources. I do not think there was a legitimate reason to stay from the perspective of fighting terror, when we should have been looking harder for OBL. But with all that said, G.W. was stubborn, not evil. His intentions were decent. He should have pivoted earlier from Iraq, before the loss of more American lives. I think a lot of mainstream dems and Hillary voters would agree.

  8. PRESERVING MEMORY

    It may be important for our neighborhoods to remember the events of June 2, 2016, when what has now been proven to have been a rent-a-mob, coordinated with one national political committee, attacked San Jose residents leaving a political rally in downtown San Jose, with the police who were present directing them to leave by walking through a narrow corridor to the parking facility with paid agitators on either side, egging, cursing, and hitting the departing rally attenders.

    We have now learned that this attack was just one in a series of similar attacks across the USA, but this one featured both the Mayor and Police Chief on June 3 blaming the acts of the rent-a-mob on the speaker at the rally, not the true culprits. So to our shame, San Jose will be more than a footnote to the 2016 national election, it has already become linked with the similar public disorder in Chicago by the same rent-a-mob.

    Let’s not let this information disappear even though it is very likely that the Mercury News would like to have it dwindle away. This was a remarkable violation of the civil rights of everyone to use the streets and sidewalks safely, something that has been linked with the name of Bull Connor from the late Sixties when he as a law enforcement official used fire hoses to bar visitors to his city. Using a rent-a-mob to do the same thing is just plain Bull Connorism by the Mayor and Police Chief.

    • > is just plain Bull Connorism by the Mayor and Police Chief.

      For heavens sake, don’t give Liccardo and Garcia any ideas.

      Bull Connor only used fire hoses. He wasn’t cynical or deceitful enough to use a Soros funded rent-a-mob of judicially exempt juveniles.

      Now you’re just giving the Liccardo/Garcia claque the idea of using BOTH mobs and firehoses.

    • Anyone still reading my “Preserving Memory” note will find it interesting that the newest entry into “connecting community” known as “Nextdoor” removed that information after three days as inappropriate. Nextdoor is owned by four large investors who have announced their intent to take Nextdoor public when they can, but the San Francisco owners appear to have harnessed their horses here in San Jose to the powers that be in San Jose’s City Hall, and those powers simply don’t want to be reminded that they were what we used to call “cats’ paws” to generate propaganda against the candidate who spoke.

  9. We can pick up the miss boxes of Republican ballots at the end of Alviso slue Wednesday morning as the tide goes out.

  10. No, Rocinante, not tonight. We aren’t going to make any sense to these folks. Sad, in the country’s heart of computer-aided knowledge, they seem unable, unwilling to use *the Google* to test their beliefs…

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