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By Brian Hews
Publisher | Follow X
November 10, 2025
Susan Shelley is once again using her Orange County Register column, “Voter ID Is Key to Election Integrity,” published November 9, 2025, to push voter ID laws and cast doubt on California’s elections.
She paints a picture of people lugging “Santa Claus sacks” full of ballots into county offices, calling our vote-by-mail system lawless causing every county registrar-recorder and city clerk in California to shake their heads in disgust. What she doesn’t understand—or deliberately ignores—is that California’s elections are among the most secure and transparent in the nation.
California is a vote-by-mail state. Every registered voter receives a ballot with a unique barcode tied to their registration record. When it’s returned, election officials scan it, verify the signature, and log it electronically which locks that voter’s record immediately. Voters receive an email or text confirming when their ballot has been accepted and another notification when it’s counted. That’s real-time accountability and real chain of custody.
Shelley misleadingly suggests that counties are required to count any ballots received up to seven days after an election, even if they aren’t postmarked. That’s not true. California law ensures that ballots mailed by Election Day are still counted if they arrive within the state’s deadline window—seven days statewide, ten in Los Angeles County. The L.A. County Registrar, which oversees cities like Cerritos, uses that ten-day canvass period to verify and process every legitimate ballot. Each envelope is signature-checked and timestamped before being accepted. Ballots without proof of timely mailing are rejected. It’s just like the IRS—no postmark after the 15th, your return doesn’t count. Far from “lawlessness,” the rule guarantees accuracy and protects voters from postal delays outside their control.
Her claim that people can vote multiple times under different names is equally false. Once a ballot is issued and scanned, the voter’s record locks. Try to vote again and the system flags it immediately. Can people steal ballots or try to vote twice? In isolated, illegal cases, yes.
In 2006, twelve people tied to a Republican-funded voter registration drive in Orange County were charged with felony election fraud for paying workers up to ten dollars per registration to switch voters to the Republican Party without consent. Many victims said they thought they were signing petitions, not new registrations. State officials confirmed the scheme was run through the local GOP, one of California’s largest organized voter-registration fraud cases.
Counties use barcodes, signature checks, electronic poll books, and post-election audits to catch and reject fraudulent returns. That’s how the system prevents small crimes from becoming statewide “stolen elections,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice and the Los Angeles County Registrar’s election integrity protocols.
Shelley’s latest attack on California’s elections isn’t new. She’s spent years recycling the same claims in Register columns with headlines like “Voter ID and the Illusion of Suppression” (2021), “California Needs a Voter ID Law” (2022), and “Huntington Beach Shows How to Restore Faith in Elections” (2024). Each time, she frames voter ID as “common sense” while ignoring hard data that these laws disenfranchise voters who already face the biggest obstacles to the polls. It’s a pattern— it’s propaganda packaged as commentary.
Then Shelley trots out Huntington Beach as her shining example of “election integrity,” praising the city’s voter ID measure, which recently failed. What she doesn’t tell readers is that Huntington Beach’s council has been taken over by a MAGA-aligned majority proudly calling itself the “MAGA-nificent Seven.” This group has defied state sanctuary laws, tried to censor library books, and even approved a “MAGA” plaque for the city library. One of its loudest voices is Gracy Van Der Mark—a name Los Cerritos Community News readers already know well.
In 2021, LCCN exclusively reported that Van Der Mark—then a controversial school-board candidate—was invited by the Cerritos Republican Club to speak at the Cerritos Library just weeks after an AAPI hate-crime beating at Don Knabe Park. Our investigation revealed her attendance at alt-right rallies, ties to Proud Boy supporters, and appearances alongside people later seen in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us.” The event was organized by then–Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose, who resigned years earlier after emailing a racist “watermelon White House” meme about President Obama. Cerritos residents erupted in anger, calling the invitation “perpetuating hate in our city.”
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No other community publication reported those facts before LCCN. Van Der Mark’s public image today—her role on the Huntington Beach City Council and her alignment with MAGA causes—flows directly from that early reporting.
Yet Susan Shelley now holds her up as an example of “integrity.”
Shelley’s voter ID crusade also ignores reality: not everyone has an ID. Seniors, low-income voters, and people with disabilities are the ones most hurt by those laws. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, about 11% of eligible U.S. voters lack the required government-issued photo ID—and the rates are even higher among seniors, minorities, students, and low-income citizens. These are the very people Shelley’s proposals would disenfranchise, all under the false flag of “election security.”
The real issue isn’t just Shelley’s misinformation—it’s that the Orange County Register keeps publishing it. Publisher Ron Hasse and executive editor Frank Pine, who oversee (not own) the Southern California News Group papers, keep giving her a platform to distort facts and sow distrust. That’s not journalism—it’s propaganda packaged as commentary.
California’s elections work. They are secure, verifiable, and transparent. Shelley’s “logic” collapses under the weight of the facts—and the Register’s willingness to amplify it shows exactly why local journalism like Los Cerritos Community News still matters.
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