The Republican Party is trying to suppress the vote in this California county. Here’s how

You thought voting rights were under siege only in places like Georgia, Florida and Texas?

Wrong. There’s a campaign underway to make voting more difficult in parts of California.

San Luis Obispo County, located on the state’s Central Coast, is a prime example.

There, the local Republican Party is attempting to cast doubts on the integrity of the local elections office, and it’s petitioning for changes in the way future balloting is conducted.

Among the requests:

• Return to in-person voting.
• Allow mail-in voting for “physical hardship” only.
• Do away with voting centers and restore neighborhood polling places.
• Allow ballots to be cast on one day only — no early voting except in hardship situations.
• Stop the use of the so-called “problematic” Dominion Voting Systems machines. (Among other accusations, the GOP claims the machines are under financial control of the Chinese Communist Party.)

In other words, the party wants to revert to the inconvenient, old-school system of voting, eliminating accommodations that boost turnout and are favored by the vast majority of county voters, such as permanent and widespread vote-by-mail.

It’s part of a larger Election Integrity Project California that’s been attempting to portray the state’s voting system as a fraudulent, broken mess that keeps dead people on the voting rolls and allows voters to cast multiple ballots

In October 2020, it claimed 440,000 ballots were sent to ineligible voters — an allegation PolitiFact, an arm of the nonprofit Poynter Institute, found to be false.

“The analysis ... cites no evidence of fraud and provides no evidence that California sent 440,000 ballots for the general election to ineligible voters,” it said.

Yet the Elections Integrity Project is still trying to gin up controversy by inviting visitors to its website to submit a “Citizen Incident Statement.”

San Luis Obispo County Clerk/Recorder Tommy Gong said the local GOP Party claimed 31 problem ballots had been mailed in the November election, but when he asked for more specifics, he got no response.

That’s not all: The SLO County GOP also wants another audit of 2020 election results completed within six months — something the county Elections Office doesn’t even have the authority to do.

This comes as San Luis Obispo County is on the verge of making major decisions about future elections — including whether to stick with the old polling-place model or adopt a hybrid that combines universal mail-in voting with regional voting centers where people can go to cast ballots or sort out any problems.

Certainly, every resident has the right to lobby for the voting system they prefer.

But we’re sick and tired of baseless efforts to discredit our election system by scaring voters with lies and cherry-picked data.

Merely raising the issue of election integrity — with no evidence to suggest fraud — is specious and leading, raising the specter of a problem where none exists.

In fact, the only ones questioning the integrity of the process are those who can’t accept the results of the last election and now want to change the rules to favor their candidates go forward.

Another thing: Why raise these accusations now, five months after the election?

SLO County Republican Party Chairman Randall Jordan told us he doesn’t “necessarily” believe local election results were compromised.

“We are asking for the audit and changes in procedure to ensure future voter confidence and fairness in upcoming elections,” he said via email.

Then why stoke fear? Why encourage changes that would discourage participation? What’s really going on here?

It’s as simple as this: The Republican Party in San Luis Obispo County is questioning the integrity of our elections as part of a larger GOP effort to undermine American voting rights.

It’s the same grotesque and transparent campaign that’s going on in places like Georgia, Florida and Texas.

It has no place in a democracy that strives to increase participation, and if you think it can’t lead to substantial suppression of our vote, think again.

Counties with a conservative majority on their Board of Supervisors could elect to turn back the clock by limiting vote-by-mail and other innovations that have made voting more convenient and have increased turnout, just as they’re trying to do in San Luis Obispo County.

Elections in California are free and fair, and they need to stay that way — which means protecting them from cynical players trying to manipulate the rules.