If anyone was ever a ripe target for a recall, it was Los Angeles County DA George Gascón. He’s unapologetically implemented terrible “criminals first” policies resulting in death and destruction in Los Angeles, has called parents of crime victims “not very bright” if they don’t agree with his policies, and has become a folk hero to hardened criminals.
And after San Franciscans got a recall against Chesa Boudin on the ballot then booted him in a historic election, there was no doubt in the mind of Angelenos that the Gascón’s days were numbered. Recall organizers were touting the progress of signature gathering and telling donors, “As long as we have the money, this will qualify for the ballot.” And donors responded – as of June 30, just five months after the current effort began, donors contributed more than $8 million. On July 6, the community celebrated as it was announced that more than 717,000 signatures had been delivered to LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (RRCC) Dean Logan for validation.
The community’s hopes were dashed on August 15 when it was announced that the petition had failed in a spectacular fashion. Out of the 715,000 signatures submitted by Logan’s count, more than 195,000 had been deemed invalid.
How did it happen?
For once, despite the rhetoric being hurled, it’s not Logan’s fault. RedState reviewed documents from witnesses and whistle-blowers to determine the bottom line:
The Recall George Gascón effort failed because the committee’s purse strings were controlled by political consultants who were being paid by the campaign, and who contracted with vendors on the basis of cronyism or financial gain instead of competency. Despite the vast sums of money raised and spent, the quality of the signatures submitted to LA County was “embarrassingly incompetent,” in the words of one former professional who viewed some of the materials provided to RedState.
Worse, RedState was contacted by a whistleblower who, under anonymity, provided details that seemed to show Cassandra Vandenberg, the woman widely recognized as the head of the campaign committee.
- knew for more than a month that the committee’s progress was woefully inadequate,
- knew that signatures from out-of-county people and non-voters were being counted by the committee as verified signatures and even instructed campaign workers to leave them on the petitions “because we need the numbers,” and
- Preparing campaign workers in front multiple Deputy District attorneys to forge signatures of circulators on the Attestation portion of petition forms. This is done under penalty perjury.
According to campaign insiders, a duplicate check wasn’t performed before petitions were sent to the county. The numbers that donors and press received also included the signatures organizers knew would not be accepted.
Let’s dig deeper.
Mission and Procedure
Recall proponents, represented by the Committee to Support the Recall of George Gascón, had 160 days to collect 556,857 valid signatures on the recall petition in order to qualify a recall election for the ballot. A valid signature is the signature of a person who is registered to vote in Los Angeles County, and whose address and signature as written on the petition — in their own handwriting — matches the voter file. Experts agree that you should submit between 25 and 30 percent more signatures to cover disqualified signatures.
For the Gascón recall, 715,833 signatures were submitted. California’s recall law required election officials to inspect a random sample of five percent of the signatures submitted, or 35,793 signatures. A recall is automatically eligible to the ballot when more than 31,179 signatures have been validated. Recalls that were less than 25,510 valid would be automatically rejected. Logan’s office validated 27, 983 signatures from that random sample.
Based on this result, the next step was to examine each signature one-by-one to verify that they were registered voters in Los Angeles County. Also, to confirm that their signature and address match what was on file. On the basis of this inspection, an even greater percentage was found to have been invalid and only 520.050 signatures were valid. For the following reasons, 195 783 signatures were disqualified
- Not registered voters: 88.464
- 45,593 duplicates
- 32.187 Different Addresses
- 9 490 signature mismatch
- 5,374 out-of-county
- Annulled 7,344
- Weitere 9,331
Signature Pre-Validation
According to statements from recall spokespeople throughout the signature-gathering phase, the signatures were all being pre-screened to make sure that they got rid of duplicates and people who weren’t registered to vote, along with other deficiencies. Just by looking at the numbers of signatures disqualified for those two reasons, it’s apparent that either the pre-validation wasn’t done or that it wasn’t done well.
RedState has been told by campaign sources that signature forms were sent weekly to C3 Public Strategies (a Newport Beach firm) for validation. At some point between mid-May and early June C3’s contract was terminated and the committee contracted with Allied Data, a firm in Colorado. The petition forms were scanned and reviewed electronically by Allied Data, ostensibly to weed out people who weren’t registered to vote, duplicates, address mismatches, out-of-county signatures, illegible signatures, and signature mismatches.
This task is not done well. RedState reviewed photographs of petitions that were turned in to Logan’s office and observed signatures of people living in Calexico, Oakhurst, Mendocino, Madera, Berkeley, Tehachapi, Del Mar, and even Pryor, Oklahoma being submitted and counted as having been pre-screened by the campaign.

The blacked out lines indicate inadequate signatures that were caught during the pre-validation process. Redactions in red are signature lines submitted to the RCCC but in which RedState has removed personal information.
Falsified Attestations
A second aspect of the petition was to be prescreened is the attestation. The person who collected the signatures has to attest that each sheet is true. This must be done by them in their handwriting. If the attestation is not filled out or is filled out incorrectly, the entire page of signatures will be disqualified by the registrar, so it’s a very important part of the process.
Based on documents reviewed by RedState and witness interviews, a large number of paid circulators did not complete the attestations properly and that failure wasn’t caught by the signature gathering firm, or by C3, or by Allied Data, or the committee, until the last week or so before the petitions were to be turned in on July 6. RedState received multiple witness accounts confirming that top campaign officials instructed staff to fill out the attestations by themselves. This included forging signatures, if required. While this was occurring, at least two Deputy District Attorneys from George Gascón’s office (who supported the recall) were in the room), but no one stopped the illegal conduct from occurring – a violation of their Oath of Office and the State Bar ethics rules.
Signalist Gatherers paid by the incompetent
Signature gathering firm Let the Voters Decide isn’t off the hook here, either. There is litigation pending between the Gascón recall committee and LTVD, so I won’t rehash all of that here. While it seems that the lawsuit is about monies owed, with other background information it’s clear that a good portion of it is about who’s going to take the fall for the inevitable failure of the petition due to invalid signatures. LTVD says they didn’t do any verification because they knew that C3 and then Allied Data were validating and that they had access to Allied Data’s database as signatures were “validated.”
However, since we’ve already established that some petition forms from April and May weren’t finally vetted until late June or early July, it’s clear that LTVD staff wasn’t even ensuring that their gatherers were correctly completing the attestations – the bare minimum of professionalism. The photo below shows petitions being submitted as they are.

(The lines in black are signatures not valid and were captured during pre-validation. Redactions in red are signature lines submitted to the RCCC but in which RedState has removed personal information.
LTVD argued that LTVD refused to pay the market rate for signatures, which made it hard to gather enough people. However, screenshots from a private Facebook group administered by Mark Jacoby, owner of LTVD, show that he actively encouraged gatherers to leave California for Michigan, saying, “Michigan is where it’s at,” and, “It’s up to you to prove that when we get paid correctly and we’re able to make a fair living wage to support us and our families, we can get anything done!!! Then if a campaign is not willing to do that, they won’t get on the ballot!”
In addition, several LA County residents noted the unprofessionalism exhibited by paid signature gatherers for the effort – including badgering people who already signed to sign again. Here’s one example:
Police were called to their aid. A report was taken because they were harassing the shoppers at Marshall’s and fighting with the manager.They were using the F bomb a lot on people that would not sign. She informed me that I was already signed. She said I could sign another time. I refused.
— Ms. Redbarn (@MsRedbarn) August 17, 2022
LTVD was paid at least $3.2 million during the campaign, and it’s apparent that a chunk of those monies were paid for extremely shoddy work while Jacoby himself was in Cancun and the Bahamas, according to his travel blog.
Signatures at mid-campaign get wildly inflated
RedState documents show that campaign committee officials exaggerated signatures at different points during campaigns to incite donors to spend more money. Now, it’s no secret that most campaigns engage in some form of number padding, but this amount of padding combined with the committee’s assurances that these numbers represented pre-verified signatures gave donors and volunteers a false sense of the status of the campaign.
The campaign had over 400,000 signatures on May 4, and more than 500k on June 1. Steve Cooley was the former LA County District attorney and co-chair of the committee. He announced on June 15, that the group had attained the minimum threshold, 566,857 Signatures. However, an internal count on June 26 – which included signatures gathered from all sources – showed that there were 514,804 “verified” signatures, in total.
On July 2, just four days before the petitions were due, the internal count showed only 644,036 “verified” signatures, just over 50,000 duplicate signatures, and 141,027 signatures from non-voters.
The validity rate of both internal and volunteer counts was around 75 percent. However, organizers of campaign calls routinely claimed that only 80 to 85 percent were valid.
Given that the final count from the county showed lower numbers of duplicates and non-voters, it’s clear that the committee did black out some of the invalid signatures, but not all of them. Sources within the counting process confirm this, stating that they were informed during the 4Th of July weekend to stop marking out the out-of-county signatures, “because we need the numbers.” They were even told to submit this petition that was mailed into the office, with only one signature, showing the voter’s address as being in Del Mar, which is in San Diego County (and hardly an obscure town), because even though it was out-of-county, “it does something to help the formula for the random sample.”
It’s unclear exactly what the campaign official meant by that reference, but one interpretation would be that the committee’s hope was that they’d get lucky in the random sample validation phase and that the random sample would contain a much higher percentage of valid signatures than the petition as a whole. While the random sample valid percentage did end up being markedly higher than the petition as a whole, it wasn’t high enough to make the individual count unnecessary.
Signatures submitted in an inadequate number
Representatives of the committee, such as Steve Cooley, boasted that they would have an adequate cushion to withstand even large numbers of signatures being rejected. However, weeks before the petition was turned in, Politico’s California Playbook noted that the campaign’s goal was still a risky proposition, requiring an “extraordinary” validation rate. The following was written by them on June 16, 2005:
The Gascón recall campaign announced yesterday they’d surpassed the 566,857 signatures needed to trigger an election. But since many are bound to be rejected, they’ll need a cushion to ensure they have enough valid backers by July 6. Let’s say their validity rate is a robust 75 percent. That would require getting around 190,000 more signatures in three weeks — a challenging task with the most fervent backers already in the fold (the campaign is seeking up to 700,000, which would require an extraordinary 80 percent rate). Here’s where money really matters. The principal recall committee reported having $1.5 million on hand at the end of March, the most recent period for which there’s a filing, and the LATimes’ Seema Mehta observed the campaign is paying a handsome $8 per signature.
Knowing that they were having issues with accurate pre-validation, Vandenberg and her advisers were obligated to push for far more than 700,000 – far more than 717,000, even – signatures.
Maximum of 60,000 Signatures, Not Pre-Verified Last Day
At 10 AM on July 6, petitions had to be turned in. The count was announced at headquarters as 656,000. LTVD quickly delivered thousands of signatures within a matter of hours to headquarters. Witnesses say that LTVD received 60,000 signatures. Others believe it was closer to 30.000. What is the reason for such an urgent rush? Sources claim that Vandenberg had been in constant financial talks with LTVD, and Vandenberg made public announcements to his office about the four-hour deadline.ThShe raised more than $700,000. She didn’t say why, but some speculated that it was to pay LTVD so the signatures they had would be delivered. Insiders claim Vandenberg exceeded that goal and even doubled it. These financial reports won’t be made available to the public until September 30 unless they are requested by the committee.
Distraction Campaign
Following Logan’s announcement that all signatures would need to be independently validated, the recall committee began a diversionary campaign. Cooley wrote a long letter to the LA County Board of Supervisors claiming that Logan’s office was using “outdated” signature validation methods and that they were being unfairly blocked from observing the “count.” Cooley’s talking points were repeated by most outlets, including RedState, but ultimately they don’t hold water.
Cooley and his committee were correct in stating that guidelines for validation of signatures for vote-by–mail ballots have been greatly relaxed since 2020. He argued then that Logan used very stringent guidelines to match signatures during petition validation. However, recent information provided by the RRCC indicates that there is a much more permissive standard. Even so, only 1.26% of the signatures submitted were rejected because the signatures didn’t match.
As far as the refusal to have “observers” watch the validation process, there’s nothing in California’s recall procedures that requires a county registrar or the Secretary of State to allow observers to observe the validation process. It was not a denial of rights. Logan is required to notify the recall proponents that the petition was not sufficient, and the “proponents have the right to examine those signatures found to be invalid and the reasons therefore. ‘Proponents’ are those individuals listed on the Notice of Intention or a person authorized in writing by the proponent. This examination must be completed within 21 days of a certificate of insufficiency. §11301).”
The August 15th statement by the Committee stated:
“While the initial results are surprising and disappointing, the Recall Committee intends to exercise its full statutory and legal authority to review the rejected signatures and verification process that took place, and will ultimately seek to ensure no voter was disenfranchised.”
According to sources, as of the close of business on August 17, Logan’s office has not provided the Committee with any guidance or a proposed procedure by which they can review the rejected signatures and the verification process that took place.
Ultimately, it’s the people of Los Angeles County who have already paid the price for George Gascon’s dereliction of duty and who, thanks to the actions of people who were more concerned with egos and money than getting the job done and doing the right thing, will continue to pay the price of having him in office for two more years.
RedState spoke with Jonathan Hatami, Deputy District Attorney, who worked hand-in-hand with victims and perpetrators of violence to ensure recall eligibility.
It was truly devastating for so many that the recall failed. Los Angeles County is filled with despair. Los Angeles County’s victims, their families and those who helped bring justice to Los Angeles need to be informed about the reasons for this recall. We need answers. We deserve answers. However, when all is said and done, I know for a fact the recall’s failure was not an approval of George’s radical and dangerous policies and directives. All of us want and should have public safety. And that is not a political issue or a ‘political power grab.’ It’s a human right we all share.
While George Gascón is taking a victory lap, mothers whose children were murdered, who spent hundreds of hours working to recall him, feel re-victimized by the loss, and the people of Los Angeles County can’t leave their homes without having their heads on a swivel.
(In Part 2 we’ll detail where the $8 million that was raised by Committee went.