Los Angeles County

Effort Rejected to Force LA County's Top Prosecutor Into Recall Election

County elections officials announced Monday that more than 195,700 recall petition signatures were not valid along with a list of reasons why.

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón.
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An effort to place the recall of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón on the election ballot was rejected Monday after the county clerk's office announced that organizers did not submit enough valid petition signatures.

Only 520,050 valid petition signatures were submitted, well short of the required 566,857, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/Clerk office.

A total of 715,833 petition signatures were submitted to the county Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's office in an effort to force Gascón into a recall election.

County officials initially conducted a random sampling of the signatures to verify their validity. Based on that initial sampling, the county undertook an effort to verify all 715,833 signatures individually.

Here's a breakdown of invalid signatures provided by the clerk's office.

The county announced Monday that 195,783 of the signatures were invalid. In many cases, the person signing the petition was not a registered voter, and there were also more than 45,000 duplicate signatures, according to the county.

• Not Registered: 88,464
• Max Number of Times Signed (Duplicate): 43,593
• Different Address: 32,187
• Mismatch Signature: 9,490
• Canceled: 7,344
• Out of County Address: 5,374
• Other: 9,331

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According to the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's Office, the signature-verification process was conducted in compliance with the statutory and regulatory requirements of the California Government Code, Elections Code and Code of Regulations.

Last week, organizers of the recall effort alleged the county was not adhering to current laws for signature verification, saying rules presume that a signature is valid unless there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the signature on the petition differs in "multiple, significant and obvious" respects from the one on file. But organizers alleged that the county was not adhering to that standard.

According to the county's breakdown of invalid signatures, however, only about 9,940 were ruled to be different than the one on file, with the vast majority rejected for other reasons.

Gascón has been under fire since taking office in December 2020, when he issued a series of directives critics blasted as being soft on crime. The directives include a rule against seeking the death penalty, a ban on transferring juvenile defendants to adult court and prohibitions on filing sentencing-enhancements in most cases.

Gascón has repeatedly defended his policies, saying his stances were well-known during his campaign and his election signified public support of his agenda.

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