Police discovered a vehicle full of more than 300 California recall election ballots.
Along with the stolen ballots, police also discovered the suspected felon passed out and carrying drugs, a loaded firearm, multiple stolen credit cards, and driver’s licenses.
The vehicle was found parked at a 7-Eleven store on August 16th according to police.
The felon has yet to be idenitified.
Election officials in Los Angeles County are already doing damage control over the discovery.
They claim that there’s no way to determine if this was intended election fraud, saying:
“There’s nothing to indicate this was focused on the election.”
NBC Los Angeles broke the story:
Police Monday were investigating the theft of more than 300 recall election ballots that were found in a man's parked car in Torrance, resulting in his arrest.
Officers were called about 10:45 p.m. Aug. 16 to a 7-Eleven located in the area of Emerald Street and Hawthorne Boulevard on reports of a man who was sleeping in his car in the parking lot.
Officers located the man and found in his vehicle a loaded gun, unspecified narcotics and drivers licenses and credit cards that belonged to other people, along with a box of mail in the backseat which contained the unopened and unmarked ballots, according to a Torrance Police Department statement.
The LA County Registrar's office told Eyewitness News that there was no indication that the ballots were taken in an an attempt to influence the results of the upcoming election.
The Registrar's office said this specifically:
"There's nothing to indicate this was focused on the election."
Here's more on the alarming discovery from ABC 7:
Police say the man was a felon. The drugs found included Xanax pills and methamphetamine. Police say they also found multiple California driver's licenses and credit cards in the names of other people.
The man was taken into custody, but has since been released on his own recognizance. Police still don't know how he obtained the ballots and what his intent was.
"The election ballots, they were un-tampered with, unopened, a little over 300 of them found, primarily from addresses in Lawndale," Ponegalek said. "There were some from Compton. We're still trying to figure out where all these belonged to at this time so we're working with the Los Angeles (county) election office as well as the U.S. Postal Inspector."
The Los Angeles County Registrar's office tells Eyewitness News that these ballots for the Sept. 14 recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom had been sent out but were not filled out and returned by voters.
They said there is no indication the ballots were taken specifically in an attempt to influence the results of the recall vote, as there was other stolen mail found with them.
"There's nothing to indicate this was focused on the election," the county registrar's office said.
Major signs of voter fraud in the upcoming recall election are beginning to pile up, with officials working overtime to try and alleviate fears that another election could be stolen.
Just last week, LA officials addressed concerns over the fact that there were holes in the envelopes of mail-in ballots that could reveal how citizens voted if the ballots are folded into the envelope a certain way.
The officials were responding to this viral video, which shows that the holes in the envelopes could reveal information of how people voted:
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