UPDATE 2: If you watch today’s informational meeting (at beginning) you will see the city clerk give her ‘reasons’ as to what happened election day.
Just like clockwork, one of the local TV stations responded to blog posts by Jen Holsen and I. Aguilar reassures us she was only delivering unmarked ballots;
City Council Chair Sue Aguilar has drawn fire this week for delivering ballots to some voting centers.
Aguilar said she was dispatched to deliver blank ballots to both Whittier Middle School and Lincoln High School. She also went to Harvey Dunn to deliver tape for the machines.
“I didn’t have any contact with any of the marked ballots, the ballot boxes, or did I talk to any of the voters or any of that,” said Aguilar.
I will start by saying, with only a 14% turnout in a municipal election, it is unacceptable that any polling place ran out of ballots. The Litz-Hogstad-Chase-Gant team have proven to make this past election look like a botched elementary school science project. What if this would have been a presidential election? Florida all over again. I’ll give Gant and Litz a pass on this one (I don’t think either one of them know what is going on) but Hogstad who touted her years of experience in the clerk’s office as an assistant clerk should have handled the situation better. All I can say is that we should have never gotten rid of Debra Owen to begin with, and now there is one more mark on the chalk board of how dumb of a decision it was to terminate her.
While I thank Sue for wanting to help, she should not have. Hogstad could have summoned many other people to deliver unmarked ballots. Secondly, the assumption of impropriety is there. Â I will admit, I never suspected anything illegal was done by Aguilar, but when your fellow councilors are up for re-election, you should probably stay as far away from polling places as possible except to vote.
Duh.
Interestingly, on election day, Kermit escorted his wife to the auditors office to pickup an absentee ballot for someone. When they saw Kermit they barked at him and told he wasn’t to be within 100 feet of the office. But the council chair? Apparently she has free reign.