Congressional candidate Alison Hayden was among members of a GOP election integrity committee who testified on Nov. 1 at a Board of Supervisors meeting concerning the security of ballots during the June primary elections.
“I brought up the Konnech issue and the fact that they did not swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” she said. “We wanted to know the poll worker citizen's status and everyone’s status who was working the primary.”
The Alameda County Registrar of Voters has a contract with Konnech Corp., which allegedly uses Poll Chief to collect data on election workers. As previously reported in the Southern California Record, Konnech CEO Eugene Yu was arrested last month and recently released for allegedly transferring data on Los Angeles County election workers to be stored on a server in China.
Heyden’s two-minute testimony was presented in connection with concerns being taken up in a closed session with Jason Bezis, attorney for the Alameda County Taxpayers Association, who had threatened legal action if the Registrar of Voters denied observers close access during midterm elections on Nov. 8, according to a press release.
“It's all about voter confidence and citizens coming down and being able to have access to the processing of our votes,” Hayden told the Southern California Record.
Election law specifies that observers must be provided “sufficiently close access” to observe the processing of ballots. However, members of the Alameda County Republican Party Election Integrity Committee allege that when observers asked to see where ballots are brought in from the drop boxes and from the U.S. Postal Service, they have not been allowed to do so.
“The reality is anyone could be pulling ballots out of anywhere,” Hayden said. “There's totally no chain of custody.”
Hayden, a GOP election observer, and candidate for the 14th Congressional District, was expelled on election night after conversing in Mandarin with a Chinese woman.
“I was kicked out of the adjudication room,” said Hayden, who attended school in Taiwan. “During the primary, I went twice to that room on different days and different weeks. That room was full of Chinese people."
As a result, instead of observing inside last week, she was outside watching ballots being brought in.
“The drop boxes were handled by private citizens,” Hayden recounted. “Each had one hour of training for $50. There were two people in a car, they got $40 for gas, and were paid $350.”
It was raining outside and Heyden added she was not allowed to get close enough to the ballots to see how they were checked in.
“I think the elections are a captured operation,” she said. “I don't want that to be true, but it feels like it.”
Hayden has so far garnered 33.4% of the vote compared to incumbent Democrat Eric Swalwell's 66.6%, according to the Secretary of State website.
She sent a letter to Alameda County's Board of Supervisors, Registrar of Voters, Sheriff's Office, Civil Grand Jury, and District Attorney detailing her observation of discrepancies.