A Los Angeles woman recently found a box of approximately 104 mail-in ballots lying on a sidewalk while walking her dog, but county officials say that foul play shouldn’t be suspected in the strange discovery.
Christina Repaci was walking in East Hollywood over the weekend when she noticed a box of unopened ballots. She attempted to alert the sheriff’s office, but was reportedly told by authorities to get in touch with the postal service instead.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office confirmed to The Daily Wire that the ballots were for California’s upcoming primary election on June 7. Under a new state law, every registered voter in California will receive mail-in ballots for that election.
“I turned the corner and I just saw this box of envelopes, and it was a USPS box,” Repaci told Fox 11. “I picked some envelopes up and I saw they were ballot.”I actually called the Sheriff’s Department,” Repacci explained. “I couldn’t get through, so I emailed them.”
Repaci kept the ballots in her possession as she waited for an answer, but she received “an email back from a deputy basically in so many words saying it wasn’t their problem, and to contact the USPS.”
Eventually, she was put in touch with Los Angeles County’s Registrar’s Office. Registrar Dean Logan picked up the ballots from Repaci.
“He (Logan) picked them up. I made sure he was legit,” she explained. “He gave me a card, and took a photo of the box.”
“It was so much stress and for just one person to get back to me. What do I do here? Now if it happens to someone else, they don’t know what to do,” Repaci remarked. “They’ll just put them in a dumpster or throw them in the trash. I just don’t think it should have been this hard to figure out what to do with legal ballots.”
For its part, the L.A. County registrar’s office released a statement saying, “Thanks to the cooperation of the person who found the ballots, we were able to quickly respond and coordinate the secure pickup of the ballots.”
“We have reissued new ballots to the impacted voters,” the office added. “Early signs indicate that this was an incident of mail theft and not a directed attempt at disrupting the election. We are cooperating with the United States Postal Service and law enforcement to investigate.”
Repaci, however, appeared dismayed the ballots went missing in the first place.
“This is a country of freedom and our votes should matter and something like this should never happen,” Repaci told the media.
The Daily Wire reached out to California’s Secretary of State’s office Elections Division staff for a comment regarding this report. This story will be updated if a response is given.