Organizers behind Alameda County recalls want registrar of voters fired

(BCN) -- The people behind the successful recalls of Oakland's mayor and Alameda County's district attorney are now coming for the county's registrar of voters. During a public comment period at the Board of Supervisors' Tuesday meeting, Edward Escobar of the Coalition for Community Engagement, along with several supporters, urged the board to fire Registrar Tim Dupuis -- a request the supervisors didn't dismiss out of hand.

"Elections, as it is, are viewed as being complicated, so we need to make them as user-friendly as possible," Escobar told the board. "Tim Dupuis is not providing or facilitating this process to make it better."

Escobar demanded that the board "dispatch" Dupuis as soon as possible. Several speakers, including Kanitha Matoury, former candidate for Oakland's at-large City Council seat, and Newark City Councilmember Ana Apodaca, also urged the board to take action over Dupuis' perceived missteps and lack of transparency.

"We've seen too many mistakes in the past and if we don't act, this problem will keep damaging public trust," Matoury said.

Matoury has said her candidacy was hurt because her name was on the second page of electronic ballots at polling places but voters weren't aware they should scroll down to see more candidate names. While Apodaca thanked Dupuis for his deft handling of a very close election in her city on Nov. 5, she also said she was frustrated by his lack of communication with city officials.

"I've spoken to many of my colleagues throughout Alameda County and our city clerks had a really hard time getting information out of the registrar of voters regarding the elections and it's very hard to understand why there wasn't better communication and a liaison with our city clerks," Apodaca said.

She and other speakers also complained about how long the vote count took for the Nov. 5 election. In addition, Dupuis' critics say he has made mistakes tabulating ranked choice votes in cities that use the alternative election system, denied access to people wanting to observe the election process and initially refused to release the county's "cast vote records" in an electronic format that allows for independent verification of the vote tallies, instead of the PDF format he was using at the start of the Nov. 5 election process.

Some speakers were also critical of the fact that Dupuis is the head of both the Registrar of Voters Office and the county's Information Technology Department. Supervisors didn't seem shocked by the criticisms, which have been percolating throughout the county for several election cycles now.

"The board will not necessarily be doing anything to disparage the ROV, that's a personnel matter that we will discuss in closed session, but concerns that have been raised have not gone on deaf ears," board president Nate Miley said. "We understand what people are saying."

Miley noted that the county's elections are complex, with the size of the electorate, the diversity of voters' languages, the ranked choice voting system in some cities and the youth voting allowed in Oakland and Berkeley for board of education elections all playing a part.

"We will be looking at the ROV and discussing this moving forward. I don't want to say more than what I should say at this point in time," Miley said.

Other supervisors expressed support for working with the county's Elections Commission -- created in 2023 to oversee the Registrar of Voters Office -- to find ways to improve election processes and transparency.

"One of the things that I would like to see in working with our Elections Commission is perhaps to undertake an audit of our election system and our operations, just to make sure that we have the kind of transparency and integrity that our community expects and deserves when it comes to our elections," said Supervisor Lena Tam.

No vote was taken regarding any of the discussion about Dupuis' performance Tuesday since it was only brought up during a public comment period. Dupuis didn't respond to a request for comment.

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