Orange County, CA Response to Bomb Threat at Ballot Counting Facility After Election Is Worse Than First Thought

Things don’t add up.

(This story is significant because 5 out of 6 US House seats counted in conservative Orange County were awarded to the Democrats.  At least 3 of these seats flipped blue after election day. )

Orange County, California waited more than an hour after receiving a bomb threat before removing people from its election counting facility on the Friday night after the 2024 election. 

Anyone who was old enough to remember it will never forget 9-11.  Who can forget the innocent Americans jumping from the Twin Towers?  Who can forget the numerous stories of firemen going in those huge buildings in efforts to save others, some of whom were never seen again.  That was a life changing day.

As a result of 9-11 and other events, most Americans would expect to be told of a bomb threat in a building in which they were in as soon as possible.  Americans would want to get out of any such building as soon as possible.  They would want to be told immediately and given orderly instructions as soon as possible.  They would want to find safety as soon as possible.

This didn’t happen in Orange County, California at its Election counting facility on the Friday after the 2024 Election.  

We reported on Saturday, November 9th, that there was a bomb threat at the election counting facility in Orange County, California the day before on Friday, the 8th.

The next day we learned that poll watchers were asked to leave the facility first.

Video of the white trucks. Why weren’t poll workers instructed to leave the property?
Sheriff is expected to make a statement soon. https://t.co/IFkEl36CuG pic.twitter.com/RskKwff3Ff

— Sarah Stock ✟ (@sarahcstock) November 9, 2024

We then learned more from Sarah Stock from Rebel News that poll workers were not removed from the facility at the same time as the observers and that ballots were left out in the open.

Despite poll observers and lawyers being told by law enforcement to immediately evacuate the property or otherwise face arrest, poll workers were told to collect their personal belongings before they were moved to a separate room for an estimated thirty minutes during the search.

A poll worker told Rebel News that throughout this half-hour period, ballots were left out in the open. Many observers were worried about the potential for election interference to occur while they were off the property, as there were no third parties present to keep OC ROV staff accountable. “I just have PTSD from all the election shenanigans in 2020,” one of them expressed.

In addition, the livestream of the facility was cut off at this time:

The registrar, Bob Page, told Rebel News that the ballots were secured. “They were left on the tables, but there were Sheriff’s deputies that stayed there all night,” he said, confirming that the doors to the room were locked following the evacuation.

Page was unable to confirm the reason for the protocol to evacuate the poll observers but not the workers and said that the decision was made by the Sheriff’s Department. Rebel News has reached out to the Sheriff’s office for comment.

While a live stream is typically available online for the public to watch the vote-counting process, it was turned off as the evacuation began. The registrar said it was shut down because vote counting was finished for the day, and confirmed that there is no playback of the recording available.

Many questions remain and some were posed to the county officials.  ROV Page responded with the following timeline.

The Orange County Registrar of Voters received the bomb threat by email on the evening of November 8, 2024. The email was sent to one of our general email accounts (ocvoter@ ocvote.gov), not to a specific employee at 5:42 p.m.

Once a member of the Registrar of Voters staff opened the email, the email was forwarded to the Registrar of Voters from the general email account at 6:08 p.m. Once the Registrar saw it, he immediately radioed the Sheriff’s Department staff on site, calling them into his office to share the threat. As this was a radio transmission there is no record of the time the message was radioed.

The Sheriff team took control of the scene. They evaluated the threat and then informed us at about 6:45 p.m. that we would be evacuated to allow the Sheriff’s bomb squad to search the County campus and our entire building.

This shows that it took more than an hour for the county officials to react to the bomb threat.  Innocent people onsite were kept in the dark about the threat.  ROV Page continues:

Receiving this directive, we immediately asked staff to stop processing ballots, which was 15 minutes before our planned stop for the day.

The Sheriff’s staff evacuated the observers first and then evacuated all staff to another building on the campus.

The Sheriff staff did not tell staff they were being evacuated due to a bomb threat. The Registrar did not hear what they told the observers when they evacuated them from the building.

ROV Page concluded:

After about 20 minutes being isolated in another building, all staff were released to go home for the evening to return to work at 8 a.m. on November 9, 2024. The Sheriff’s bomb squad completed its search before 8 p.m. on November 8, 2024.

Registrar of Voters staff resumed processing vote-by-mail and provisional ballots on November 9, 2024 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with observers always present.

This scenario makes no sense when discussing it with professionals in law enforcement. 

Why would the Sheriff not remove everyone from the premises immediately?  

If this really was a bomb threat you would remove everyone immediately.  Leaving people inside the counting facility knowing that there was a bomb threat was dangerous.

Why would they leave people in the room while observers were removed? 

This makes absolutely no sense.  All individuals should have been moved ASAP.  It is “mystifying” why the workers were left in the room while observers were removed.  A staged removal makes no sense.

If you were an observer or a worker would you be happy to hear that you were allowed to remain in a facility for more than an hour after a bomb threat was received?  If you were a worker would you be happy to discover that you were left in a building where a bomb threat was received and not told about it while some people were removed from the building before you were removed? 

A new question is what is the current bomb threat standard operating procedures for this facility?  Does it really say during a bomb threat that you leave some people in the building while removing others?

Did Orange County officials react in such a lackadaisical manner because they knew the threat was not legitimate?

Why the delay?  It makes no sense.

The other material issue is related to the shutting down of the livestream.  In a separate communication ROV Page shared that the Sheriff shut down the livestream that evening:

The livestream cameras were not turned off while ballots were being processed.

I said: “Our livestream cameras were broadcasting when we stopped ballot processing, when the observers were escorted out, and when ROV staff started to leave.”

The livestream cameras were turned off as we were being escorted out of our building by the Sheriff’s Department.

We only livestream when we are processing ballots.

The livestream of the facility was turned off that evening is also a major concern.  LEO’s we know say that this too may have put people’s lives in danger.  The livestream would provide evidence if a bomb was found.  It could be used to identify a bomb in a facility.  Shutting it down makes no sense.

There is still much to learn about the election counting in Orange County, CA.

Do those who run elections in Orange County and in California believe that their elections would pass a DOJ Civil Rights Division investigation or audit?  We know that the voter rolls in CA have millions of non-citizens in them and so much more.

BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: California Certifies It’s 2024 Election Despite Huge Issues – It’s NOT Certifiable

None of this makes sense and because of this the 2024 Election in California should not be certified until it does.