(BCN) — The folks behind the profitable recollects of Oakland’s mayor and Alameda County’s district legal professional are actually coming for the county’s registrar of voters. Throughout a public remark interval on the Board of Supervisors’ Tuesday assembly, Edward Escobar of the Coalition for Neighborhood Engagement, together with a number of supporters, urged the board to fireside Registrar Tim Dupuis — a request the supervisors did not 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 instructed the board. “Tim Dupuis is not providing or facilitating this process to make it better.”
Escobar demanded that the board “dispatch” Dupuis as quickly as attainable. A number of audio system, together with Kanitha Matoury, former candidate for Oakland’s at-large Metropolis Council seat, and Newark Metropolis Councilmember Ana Apodaca, additionally urged the board to take motion over Dupuis’ perceived missteps and lack of transparency.
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“We’ve seen too many mistakes in the past and if we don’t act, this problem will keep damaging public trust,” Matoury stated.
Matoury has stated her candidacy was harm as a result of her title was on the second web page of digital ballots at polling locations however voters weren’t conscious they need to scroll right down to see extra candidate names. Whereas Apodaca thanked Dupuis for his deft dealing with of a really shut election in her metropolis on Nov. 5, she additionally stated she was annoyed by his lack of communication with metropolis officers.
“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 stated.
She and different audio system additionally complained about how lengthy the vote depend took for the Nov. 5 election. As well as, Dupuis’ critics say he has made errors tabulating ranked selection votes in cities that use the choice election system, denied entry to folks wanting to watch the election course of and initially refused to launch the county’s “cast vote records” in an digital format that enables for impartial verification of the vote tallies, as an alternative of the PDF format he was utilizing at the beginning of the Nov. 5 election course of.
Some audio system have been additionally essential of the truth that Dupuis is the pinnacle of each the Registrar of Voters Workplace and the county’s Info Know-how Division. Supervisors did not appear shocked by the criticisms, which have been percolating all through the county for a number of 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 stated. “We understand what people are saying.”
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Miley famous that the county’s elections are advanced, with the dimensions of the voters, the range of voters’ languages, the ranked selection voting system in some cities and the youth voting allowed in Oakland and Berkeley for board of training elections all enjoying an element.
“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 stated.
Different supervisors expressed help for working with the county’s Elections Fee — created in 2023 to supervise the Registrar of Voters Workplace — to seek out methods to enhance 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,” stated Supervisor Lena Tam.
No vote was taken relating to any of the dialogue about Dupuis’ efficiency Tuesday because it was solely introduced up throughout a public remark interval. Dupuis did not reply to a request for remark.
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