Daily Breeze – by Donna Littlejohn
On the eve of a contentious national election that at times has focused on potential voter fraud and suppression, a San Pedro couple unexpectedly landed in the media spotlight this week.
Authorities are investigating the story behind more than 80 unused ballots — all with different names but all addressed to the same single-unit apartment — that landed at their mailboxes.
“I call it spooky,” said Jerry Mosna, who discovered the bundled stacks on top of the apartment building’s mailbox center on Saturday. He went first to the Los Angeles Police Department, where officers directed him to the main San Pedro post office on Beacon Street. The ballots were returned to the sender, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s Office.
Two investigators from the U.S. Inspector General’s Office met with Mosna and his wife, Madeline, in their apartment Thursday as part of their follow-up report.
The county registrar-recorder also is investigating.
“We are carefully reviewing our records and gathering information to fully identify what took place,” said Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan in a written statement.
“Our preliminary assessment is that this appears to be an isolated situation related to a system error that occurred, causing duplicate ballots to be issued to an address entered for a single voter,” he said. “We are working directly with the system vendor to ensure the issue is addressed and to identify any similar occurrences.”
MYSTERIOUS DELIVERY
Mosna, an immigrant from the Czech Republic who came to the United States 30 years ago, was taking a walk with some house guests from Switzerland on Saturday when he spotted the unusual stacks at the mailboxes of the four-unit building.
He said there were either 83 or 84 ballots.
They all were addressed to an 89-year-old widow who lives alone in her apartment upstairs from the Mosnas. She has been in the same apartment since 1982, he said.
“I have lived here for 30 years and I never saw 84 people over here,” he said Thursday.
They recognized none of the names they looked at, he said. His wife, a Swiss native, said there were a variety of nationalities represented from the looks of it — “American, Chinese, Spanish names,” she said.
The couple, feeling overwhelmed Thursday by the flurry of calls from the media and investigators, said they were ready for their 15 minutes of fame to end.
BALLOT FOR NONCITIZEN?
In a separate case, a Gardena woman told the Daily Breeze that her husband, who crossed into the country from Mexico illegally eight years ago, had received a vote-by-mail ballot for Tuesday’s election.
While he is now petitioning the U.S. government for citizenship, she said he does not have any papers or even a driver’s license, leaving him stumped about how he would receive an official ballot. His name and address on the ballot were both correct, his wife said, adding that he had never even tried to register to vote.
“I think it’s a huge deal,” she said. “Something is definitely wrong with the system.”
Asked by a reporter about the incident, the county registrar said it would be investigated once more information is received from the couple.
“It is important for the public to know that we have a full accounting of ballots issued and returned in the election,” Logan said in the statement responding to the large bundles of ballots found by Mosna.
“Under California election law, all voted mail ballots are signature-checked against the signature on the voters’ original registration prior to being cleared for processing and tabulation, providing a safeguard against someone other than the registered voter completing and submitting a ballot.”
“I call it spooky,” said Jerry Mosna, who discovered the bundled stacks on top of the apartment building’s mailbox center on Saturday.”
Spooky?
I doubt that ghosts had anything to do with it.
Dead Dem ‘voters’, maybe.
Got rear-ended sitting at a red light by a drunk b#tch in a Cadillac on Christmas morning in San Pedro.
Serious whiplash, jacked me up good for years (Vicodins mandatory), until MSM completely healed the nerve damage.