DA Pamela Price alleges recall signature fraud

(KRON) — Backers of Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price are alleging her opponents who are trying to recall her committed fraud during the signature gathering process.

“We have extensive evidence that we have collected from volunteers and citizen in Alameda County who have come to us and made these claims, and they deserve for our election integrity to be maintained,” said William Fitzgerald with the Protect the Win campaign.

The allegations set forth in a slide show presentation revolve around three main complaints: Signature petitions were left unattended on tables and some signature gatherers were from outside the county and others from outside the state, which they say may be illegal. They also allege some signers were lured to sign an unrelated petition, and then presented with the Price recall.

“On Feb. 28, we sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta to ask him to investigate our claims,” Fitzgerald said. “Today is March 18, we have not heard anything from Attorney General Rob Bonta or his office. And this isn’t the type of thing you can wait six months for. Democracy is currently being tested in Alameda County.”

The Price campaign calls Bonta’s alleged inaction a dereliction of duty, and now they’ve asked the U.S. Attorney’s office to investigate.

“This is even more important today because every single signature is under increased scrutiny following the announcement last Thursday by the registrar of voters that the folks who spent millions of dollars collecting signatures may not have enough,” Fitzgerald said.

Last week the Alameda County registrar of voters said the signatures would have to be manually counted to verify if there were enough legal signatures because a random sampling was not sufficient. Around 73,195 legal signatures would force Price into a recall election.

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