WESTMINSTER, Calif. — Orange County officials said Tuesday that they were investigating reports that someone established a fake voting center in Westminster, accepted ballots and handed out phony "I Voted" stickers.
Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said the incident was under investigation by his office and the Orange County district attorney's office, so he couldn't comment further. At about 3 p.m., he said officials were "on scene and active right now."
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said "there was some kind of operation there and we are looking at it and the law. My investigators are there, we know who they are and we took all their identifications."
Video purporting to show the phony voting center was posted on Twitter by Ty Bailey, an organizer with OCForBlackLives, an Instagram account supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. He said the group was patrolling neighborhoods looking for voter fraud — "The orange man said to watch the polls, so that's what we're doing" — when an activist spotted a "Vote Here" sign written in black marker.
Shortly after the video was posted, a Los Angeles Times reporter saw the sign discarded behind the building.
Bailey said he saw people walking in with their ballots and then walking out with "I Voted" stickers, which he described as fake. He called the Registrar of Voters office, which confirmed it was not an official vote center.
The purported voting center was at an address that is listed as the headquarters of Apogee International, a skin-care company owned by Dr. Kimberly Ho, the vice mayor of Westminster who is up for reelection to the City Council. A man who answered a phone number for Apogee said the address was Ho's campaign headquarters. The man declined to give his name or answer questions about the site's alleged use as a fake voting center.
"You need to talk with the lawyer," the man said and would not provide further names or information.
Spitzer said California allows others, typically family members, to return mail-in ballots. "The question is, does this fall within legal ballot harvesting?" he asked.
Van Tran, a former state assemblyman who is the attorney for the Ho campaign, acknowledged that people were coming to the site to drop off ballots.
He also said the office was helping to "advise" voters on how to vote. The boxes in the video were of empty ballot envelopes, he said, not actual ballots.
"It's a false controversy that the opponents are creating," Tran said, gesturing to several activists milling about in the parking lot. "There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any illegality is happening."
Activists in the parking lot said they had no relationship with Ho's campaign opponents.
"I don't even know who her opponent is," said Justin Frazier, an activist with Clarity O.C., which describes itself as a grass-roots voter engagement organization.
