By Michael G. Stogner
As a Private Victim’s Advocate I have personally filed a criminal complaint to both the State of California Attorney General Kamala Harris and San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe & John Warren, then publicly informed Board of Supervisors.
SMCBOS Meeting June 2, 2015 at 19:34 minute mark
The criminal complaint was simple, some person(s) Hacked the State of California’s DMV Data Base. They placed San Mateo County Sheriff Deputy Juan P. Lopez’s confidential and protected drivers license number on another person’s ticket out of Los Angeles area causing him to have a suspended license and about $6,000 expense plus 3 months of no driving. You might have guessed it, neither law enforcement agency had any interest in Investigating the complaint. There lies the problem Oversight of Law Enforcement.
LATIMES today Jan. 6, 2019
DMV under scrutiny in voting glitch
State leaders will assess whether registration errors changed November election results.
By John Myers
SACRAMENTO — Faced with evidence that some voter registration forms weren’t properly filed by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, state officials will now investigate whether any votes were wrongly rejected and whether the final results in any state or local races should be reconsidered.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla and leaders of the agency that oversees the DMV agreed on Monday to settle a federal lawsuit brought by advocacy groups including the League of Women Voters of California and the American Civil Liberties Union. The settlement, in part, states that Padilla’s office will “take steps to ensure that every vote is counted” if ballots were rejected and will provide “guidance to elections officials in the relevant jurisdiction(s) on how to count the affected ballots and, if appropriate, recertify election results.”
On Dec. 14, DMV officials revealed that staff members had not transmitted voter registration files for 589 people whose applications or updated applications were filled out before the close of registration for the Nov. 6 statewide election. At the time, state officials could not confirm whether any of those voters had been turned away on election day, or if any had cast last-minute provisional ballots that were rejected in the final tally.
Monday’s settlement raises the possibility that a full investigation of the delayed voter registration documents could reveal races in which the outcome might have changed had those voters been allowed to participate.
State officials now have 60 days to complete an investigation into the identity of those voters and why DMV staff members failed to transmit the files in a timely fashion.
The error was the latest in a series of mishaps revealed in the first six months of operation for California’s new automated “motor voter” program, under which DMV customers are registered to vote unless they decline.
“I am committed to working with new leadership at DMV and the new administration to ensure integrity of the motor voter program and accuracy of the data,” Padilla said in a statement Monday night. “This settlement continues to move those efforts forward.”
Padilla’s office said on Tuesday that a preliminary investigation had not found any instances in which voter registration delays would have changed the outcome of a race.
The deadline to register for November’s election was Oct. 22. The records in question either came in before that deadline, or included documents signed and dated before that date. A Dec. 14 letter to Padilla from Jean Shiomoto, who was then DMV director, said the registration records weren’t submitted “due to a misunderstanding on the part of the department, for which we take responsibility.”
Shiomoto retired from state government at the end of 2018. Gov. Gavin Newsom has yet to appoint a new permanent director.
“We continue to actively work with our stakeholders to ensure full transparency for the California motor voter program,” Melissa Figueroa, deputy secretary for communications at the California State Transportation Agency, said in a statement Monday. “As an agency, we are committed to getting this right.”
The settlement, filed Monday in a San Francisco federal court, said that DMV staffers failed to transmit voter registration documents in a timely fashion beginning Oct. 12 and that all documents were held back for the three weeks following election day.
Several other problems were reported just days after state officials launched the DMV’s automated voter registration system in late April.
Those included multiple registration forms sent to counties for the same voter , flawed registrations for 23,000 DMV customers and a limited number of non-U.S. citizens — permanent green-card residents — mistakenly added to the voter rolls.
The agreement to investigate why DMV officials didn’t promptly submit hundreds of voter registration forms “establishes concrete steps that California will take to investigate and improve the DMV voter registration system,” said Melissa Breach, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California.
(12) comments
Anna Schuessler Daily Journal staff has this statement wrong–Lopez will next appear in court Jan. 25 to set a new jury trial date for the embezzlement, perjury and election fraud charges and is out of custody on a $170,000 bail bond, according to prosecutors.
Jan. 25, 2018 is to hear the motion for 2nd case remaining charges.
SM Daily Journal , please contact his attorney for clarification.
To correct the San Mateo Daily Journal, former Deputy Juan Pablo Lopez next court hearing is January 25, 2018. I am requesting the newspaper to contact his attorney about this date.
Let’s see if the local media covers Mr. Juan Pablo Lopez ( Former SMC Deputy ) on his next hearings.
I hope the local and national media will follow the rest of this case, I am sure the rest of the phony charges will be dropped.
When will the San Mateo County public/voters going to wake up?
San Mateo County District Attorney’s office is trying to destroy former Deputy Sheriff Juan Lopez.
I hope someone will get this to the national media.
I can only imagine how much money this is causing former Deputy Juan Lopez.
PLEASE HELP GET THIS OUT TO EVERYONE!!!
Let me get this straight. Wagstaffe’s little pal Sheriff Munks and Under-sheriff Carlos Bolanos are caught going into a house of underaged trafficked prostitution in Las Vegas in 2007, for their own recreation. Wagstaffe defends them to the hilt and says they did nothing wrong. He sweeps it under the rug.
But when a clean deputy decides to run against the corruption of the San Mateo Sheriff, Wagstaffe and Munks punish him by cooking up suspect charges that don’t hold up light when examined AND hold a big press conference to announce it? Lopez wasn’t the one caught going into a place with underaged trafficked girls. The fact that someone dared to challenge the corrupt sheriff angered Wagstaffe and Munks. Something is rotten in San Mateo County
Great statements!!!!
research about Mr. Lopez and San Mateo the last 3 years is quite a story.
if the con wrote a letter exonerating Lopez,why was it a case for 3 years?
The District Attorney’s Office withheld the letters from the Grand Jury, and offered a not so truthful representation of what the Jailhouse snitch actually said. To this day there has been ZERO evidence that Sheriff Deputy Juan P. Lopez was connected to the cellphone/s and drugs, and the DA’s Office has always known that fact. Disgusting behavior.
It’s about time, After over 3 years of the District Attorney’s lies and false charges against Former Sheriff Deputy Juan P. Lopez and others a Judge finally got to see what the DA’s office has done. It shouldn’t take over 3 years to present your side of a case. This dismissal makes 4 for 4 defendants charges dismissed.
San Mateo County D.A.’s office has a long list of cases of injustice, for the people who know, lies are not too uncommon.