Group calls for Alameda County registrar of voters to be fired
The election may be over, but a political battle rages on in Alameda County, with a group of voters calling for the registrar of voters to be fired.
A group of angry voters demonstrated at the Board of Supervisors, challenging the competence of the chief elections officer, Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis. It's not the first time he's run into opposition.
"Why are we here today? Because we have the culmination of an election that has not been fair, just and equitable for all. It is not doing that job of providing the voice for the people," said Edward Escobar, founder of a group called Citizens Unite."
About a dozen angry people had no trouble providing their voices on Tuesday morning as they rallied outside the Alameda County Administration building. Inside, they told the Board of Supervisors what they thought of the county's election process.
"Our elections have become somewhat of a joke," said one man.
Their complaints center around Dupuis, who, in addition to being the registrar of voters, also serves as the Information Technology director for the county. He was selected to do both jobs by the Board of Supervisors in 2012, and the protestors said he is failing the county.
"We are calling for and demanding that the Board of Supervisors fires Tim Dupuis, the registrar of voters," said Escobar. "He does not inspire confidence in the electorate and the voters deserve better."
The complaints are wide-ranging, from the length of time it takes to count and certify results to the difficulty some say they have in monitoring the processing of ballots in the counting center.
"You should be able, as an observer, to watch ballots being processed from beginning to end and monitor the chain of custody of the ballots. You can't do that down there," said election monitor Tuan Ngo.
And Kanitha Matoury feels her run for the at-large council seat in Oakland was sunk when her name was put on the back of the ballot page without including a note to voters.
"I've never been so frustrated with the city of Oakland," she said. "And the more I learn, there's so many areas, and so many parts and levels of this whole entire thing. And it needs to be changed and it cannot be ignored anymore."
Dupuis didn't respond to a request for comment, but it's not the first time he has run into controversy. In 2022, he used the wrong process for counting ranked-choice votes in a school board race, mistakenly naming one candidate as the winner when another got more votes. But East Bay political strategist Mary Jo Rossi, who has weathered many campaigns, said the criticism of election workers across the country is patently unfair.
"Unhappy people are always looking for a scapegoat," she said. "And it turns out that the elections officials are just one scapegoat for them."
Mail-in balloting, ranked-choice voting, instant registration, and multi-lingual election materials, they've all contributed to make the task infinitely more complex. And Rossi said, if votes are taking longer to count, it's because there is so much more scrutiny by people who are generally suspicious of the entire process.
"The pressure is on them, to every extent, to dot every "i" and cross every "t" and unless they do that, they're subject to criticism," she said. "So, I think that we're headed to a place where if you don't like the outcome of an election, that you're going to try to blame it on someone. And I think they're an easy scapegoat, but I have every faith that they're doing their jobs."
But the protesters have lost their faith, making it known with chants of "Fire Tim Dupuis! Fire Tim Dupuis!"
