Can I get an “oopsy-daisy”? No, louder! The MAGA right already believes our elections are “rigged,” so at a time when SLO County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano really needed to get everything right, the already mailed November general election ballot and voter guide got two things very wrong. Is there a conspiracy afoot?
“Elaina Cano has once again shown incompetence,” public commenter Cindy Muir claimed at the SLO County Board of Supervisors meeting on Oct. 18. “The buck stops with the county clerk. There’s no way there’s not going to be a redo of this election. Is it obvious bias and partisanship, or just coincidence?”
Oh good grief! Can it be neither? Sorry tinfoil-hatted patriNOTs, but these are examples of straight-up human error. Mistake 1 was omitting two candidates’ statements—Kevin Kreowski for Pismo Beach City Council and Ashley Smeester for area 2 of the Lucia Mar Unified School District board of trustees. That mistake was caused by mistake 1.5: publishing Pismo Beach City Council candidate Stacy Inman‘s statement twice. Technically two sides of the same mistake, see?
Since printing the same page twice and omitting a page happened to New Times once, and we blamed our now-former printer, I’d like to take a moment to blame the voter guide printer. Bad printer. BAD! So, technically this was not Cano and her office’s fault. Merely a mistake. Shit happens. Check your underpants, Cindy.
Mistake 2 is a bit trickier. Cano acknowledged a “typographical error” on San Luis Coastal Unified School District’s Measure C-22, which aimed to levy a “4.9¢ per $100 of assessed value” property tax but instead said “4.9% per $100 of assessed value.” To make the math easy, let’s say your home is worth $800,000. Measure C-22 was asking for an extra $392 a year, but the way the ballot was printed, it would tax you $39,200 a year. ¡Ay caramba!
As proof that it was a simple error and not a conspiracy, the info was correct in the election booklet but incorrect on the ballot. A dirty trickster would tamper with both!
“We have yet to figure out how that went from a cent to a percent,” Cano told New Times.
She did mention her office spent five weeks on the primary election recount, requested and paid for by Paso Robles resident Darcia Stebbens. The recount discovered Cano’s initial count was perfect.
“Time lost—that was significant,” Cano noted, not-so-subtly deflecting blame. “Our staff was working. We haven’t stopped working on weekends. Some of us take Sunday off now and again. We’re six days a week at minimum, 10 hours a day. That’s to make up for those five weeks lost.”
Hmm, maybe Cindy’s wrong. Maybe the buck doesn’t stop at the Clerk-Recorder, but it should. Cindy’s right about this: Even very human, very innocent errors like these will lead to election doubts, more recounts, and a boost in tinfoil sales.
“Does that foil come in MAGA red?”
The good news is newly corrected voter guides are being sent out toot sweet. The bad news is some people may throw them out thinking they’re redundant, and the other bad news is some people may have already mailed in their ballot, voting with missing or incorrect information.
It won’t be the first time someone voted based on misinformation, which raises this question: How was Kristin Smart murderer Paul Flores found guilty while his father Ruben Flores was found innocent of accessory to murder after the fact? Ruben has a theory. His son is innocent.
“[Prosecutors] had so much stuff they made up,” he said during a press conference. “It was about feelings. It wasn’t about facts.”
Really? Did they make up evidence of human blood in soil samples found under your deck? How about the black and red fibers found in the same soil, which were the colors Smart was wearing when she disappeared 26 years ago?
At least your attorney Harold Mesick believes you, Ruben. Mesick said you should never have been charged and that he loves “our system of justice.” He also noted that you could now return home “and rebuild the deck that was destroyed” in search of evidence. Most ridiculously and callously, he said there is a “reasonable inference” that Smart is alive and Paul will get a new trial. Wow. I’m not sure anyone would hide from her distraught parents for 26 years during one of the most highly publicized cases in recent memory. How tone-deaf are you, MeSick? That’s sick.
It’s as absurd as Cal Poly President Jeffrey D. Armstrong trotting out his typical lip service in response to the verdict.
“Kristin Smart’s disappearance is a tragic part of our Cal Poly community’s history, and our university has closely watched the case, hoping throughout for justice for Kristin and resolution for her family,” Armstrong wrote in an email to the campus community. “There will be a range of feelings about today’s outcome.”
He then pointed to counseling services and mentioned October is Dating Violence Action Month. What? No mention of the two unsolved on-campus rapes last year? Crickets?
“As we continue to process the verdict, let’s give each other the care, grace, and space needed to come to terms with this latest development,” Armstrong added.
What? No “thought and prayers”? I feel cheated. Δ
The Shredder is cynical AF. Send comments to shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 20-30, 2022.
