Los Angeles County voters are concerned about a host of voter fraud issues that could disrupt the Nov. 3 general election, even though they have a high degree of confidence in local elections officials, according to a new poll funded by the nonprofit California Community Foundation.<\/p>\n
Nearly three-quarters of respondents expressed concern that false rumors and misleading information online could confuse voters or make them believe that their vote won\u2019t count, the poll found. Other top concerns included politicians interfering with the election and mail-in ballots getting lost, stolen or delayed.<\/p>\n
Still, most of the voters surveyed expressed confidence in the county\u2019s handling of election proceedings, with 68% saying L.A. County does an excellent or good job at running elections and counting ballots. <\/p>\n
Once presented with information about how the county handles elections, that number rose to 72%. Around three-quarters of respondents also believe that the upcoming election will be fair, secure and accurate, the poll found.<\/p>\n
The online poll was conducted from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6 by Tulchin Research, a San Francisco-based public opinion firm. It surveyed 500 voters in L.A. County considered likely to cast ballots in the Nov. 3 election and has a margin of error of 4.4%.<\/p>\n
\u201cVoters feel good about the local officials running their elections. So, reinforcing the fact that that is who\u2019s in charge of the election and how the process works is reassuring to folks,\u201d said Ben Tulchin, the polling company\u2019s president. \u201cIt \u2026 reduces their anxiety about some of the outside criticism that California, L.A. County faces.\u201d <\/p>\n
The poll was funded by the California Community Foundation, which awards millions of dollars in grants to local charitable groups, to support the \u201cA Count You Can Trust Coalition,\u201d an initiative aimed at enhancing trust in local elections. <\/p>\n
Recent polling has suggested that potential federal interference in the Nov. 3 election is a top concern statewide for California voters. The local poll was administered to shed light on how L.A. County voters feel, said former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who co-chairs the A Count You Can Trust group with Miguel Santana, who leads the California Community Foundation. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the epicenter of the California vote,\u201d Villaraigosa said. \u201cThe concern is not as great as it is statewide. Here in L.A. County, people seem to trust the vote to a greater degree.\u201d<\/p>\n
A recent poll<\/a> by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, found that 61% of California voters identified interference by the Trump administration as a \u201cmajor concern.\u201d President Trump has fueled doubts over election integrity, spreading unverified claims<\/a> of widespread voter fraud in blue states such as California. <\/p>\n Young voters and Latino voters expressed the lowest levels of confidence in how the county runs elections, the new poll found. The findings suggest those demographics need \u201ca lot more reassurance\u201d that elections are safe and that their votes matter, Tulchin said. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not surprising at all, and it means we\u2019ve got work to do,\u201d Villaraigosa said. \u201cWe got a lot of work to do to communicate to those people and to make it clear that, in fact, this vote can be trusted.\u201d<\/p>\n Villaraigosa said he plans to focus his efforts on social media engagement and creating video content with poll workers to speak on how vote-counting works in the county.<\/p>\n The poll also asked respondents whether \u201cthings in Los Angeles County are going in the right direction or do you feel things have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track?\u201d Most \u2014 62% \u2014 said wrong track, and 26% said right direction.<\/p>\n Among voter concerns in the upcoming election, 18% listed the economy, the cost of living and inflation as their biggest worry, followed by election integrity, fraud and interference at 17% of respondents. Concerns about Republicans and Trump \u201cwinning or retaining power\u201d came in third, with 16% of respondents saying that is their biggest concern.<\/p>\n Homelessness and immigration, two issues that have been prominent in the L.A. mayoral race between incumbent Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman, ranked low in the list of concerns for the surveyed voters. Tulchin noted that the focus of the survey was on election integrity, which could have had an effect on what issues were top of mind of respondents. <\/p>\n The survey findings indicate that L.A. County voters seem to trust the county more than voters statewide do. Still, just over 30% of surveyed voters have a fair or poor view of how the county runs elections, Villaraigosa said. <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re concerned, but what we found in this poll is that there are a number of people who, while concerned, do trust this county,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles County voters are concerned about a host of voter fraud issues that could disrupt the Nov.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7,3413,6352,166,204,184806,8161,48,52,51,146179,47,50,49,22532,7171,8111,34991,29234,4486,1522],"class_list":["post-497017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-california","tag-concern","tag-confidence","tag-county","tag-election","tag-interference","tag-l-a-county","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-local-election-official","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-new-poll","tag-nov","tag-poll","tag-respondent","tag-villaraigosa","tag-vote","tag-voter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}