O.C. Registrar of Voters debunks viral election fraud claim

A recent Orange County Grand Jury report that found no evidence of voter fraud did little to dissuade a false claim of election tampering from exploding on social media soon after.

On Jan. 16, Joe Hoff, a far-right television and radio host, posted a video clip on his website of an Orange County Registrar of Voters worker scanning a batch of ballots three times after the November 2024 elections.

“We don’t know if there is a legitimate reason for the worker’s actions,” Hoff wrote.

Building on suspicion, the video was reposted by “End Wokeness,” an X account that commented Democrats “outperformed” on the ballot in O.C., as a poll worker was “caught” triple-scanning ballots.

The post has since amassed more than 2 million views.

In response, the Orange County Registrar of Voters issued a statement the following day and contended that the security camera footage only shows the worker properly doing her job.

“The employee scanned the batch of ballots twice and then cleaned the scanner before scanning the batch of ballots a third time because during the first two scans some of the ballots were rejected by the scanner,” the statement read. “Given the large number of vote-by-mail ballots we scan during an election, Registrar of Voters employees must regularly clean the scanners.”

No padded votes were tallied in the election results.

The Registrar of Voters also provided documents in support of their statement, including copies of Nov. 8, 2024, batch reports from the scan room during the time of the video footage, which occurred the same day a bomb threat evacuated the Santa Ana facility by late afternoon.

TimesOC

‘Highest level of integrity’: Grand jury report affirms credibility of O.C. elections

The Orange County Grand Jury issued a report on O.C.’s voting system and found no evidence of fraud or interference with regard to the 2024 election.

Jan. 8, 2025

An audit log report was also provided and showed that the first two scans of the ballots were discarded, not saved.

The original batch report and batch of ballots cannot be disclosed without a court order, as state election law mandates ballots be preserved for 22 months.

Before issuing a statement, the Registrar of Voters responded to an email inquiry from the Gateway Pundit, a far-right website owned by Hoft’s brother, which was sued by Georgia election workers who were falsely accused of fraud during the 2020 elections.

Hoft was also named in the defamation lawsuit.

Articles cited as defamatory in the complaint were no longer hosted on the website after a settlement agreement was reached in October.

The Registrar of Voters responded to the email inquiry with an initial explanation for the triple scan while also noting that quality checks and audits are part of its process to ensure an accurate vote count.

Jon Gould, dean of UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology, praised the Registrar of Voters’ commitment to transparency.

“We should expect our governmental institutions to be responsive to citizen concerns, and so it is impressive to see the extent to which the Orange County Registrar of Voters is explaining its work,” Gould said. “It is also unfortunate that this period of distrust in governmental institutions is requiring such explanations.”

A poll conducted by UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology last year found that 26% of O.C. adults did not believe President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. Among Republicans, 55% of those surveyed share that same skeptical belief.

Prompted by concern letters over alleged election fraud, the O.C. Grand Jury concluded in its report that the Registrar of Voters represented the “highest level of integrity” during the November 2024 elections.