Fairmont Prep and La Habra boys basketball teams playing like CIF-SS contenders

• January 23, 2024

Orange County boys basketball will have plenty of teams capable of going far in the CIF Southern Section playoffs that begin Feb. 6.

Fairmont Prep and La Habra will be among those teams based on how they have played lately.

Fairmont Prep’s roster has been strengthened by improved health and the addition of four transfer players who became eligible to play Dec. 24. That’s when the sit-out period expired for transfers who do not make the change of residence that would have made them eligible at the start of the season.

One of those now-eligible players for the Huskies, who are 16-8 overall and 4-1 in the San Joaquin League, is Kamerin Lewis, a 6-1 junior guard who transferred from Buena Park.

“Kam’s averaging 13 points a game,” Fairmont coach Joedy Gardner said. “We haven’t lost since he’s been active.”

The Huskies have won five in a row, including a 66-47 victory over Pacifica Christian in a league game Saturday. Fairmont Prep lost to Pacifica Christian by 10 points in their previous league encounter.

Also bolstering the Fairmont Prep roster are sophomore transfers Leroy Davis and Jacob Hsu.

The remainder of Fairmont Prep’s regular-season schedule is challenging. The Huskies, who are No. 14 in the Orange County rankings and tied for first place with Pacifica Christian, have a league game at home against Orangewood Academy on Thursday. Then they play a nonleague game against Del Rio League-leading La Serna on Saturday before league games against Capistrano Valley Christian and San Gabriel Academy next week, the final week of the regular season.

Fairmont Prep will be in Division 1 of the CIF-SS playoffs.

La Habra is alone in first place in the Freeway League with a 6-0 record. The Highlanders are 20-4 overall, have won 11 in a row and could be considered under-ranked in the Orange County Top 25 at No. 17. They are No. 1 in the CIF-SS Division 3AA poll that comes from the CIF-SS Basketball Committee.

Grayson Sinek, a 6-1 guard who was All-Orange County fourth team last season as a sophomore, is averaging 17 points, four rebounds and two steals a game.

“Grayson does it on the defensive end, too,” said La Habra coach Aaron Riekenberg. “He gets in the passing lanes to get those steals for us. Our point guard Acen Jimenez has been playing lights out. He was all-league last year as a freshman and he’s taken another big step this year.”

Riekenberg said 6-3 junior Jaedon Anderson has been another consistent contributor.

After playing Troy on Wednesday the Highlanders have league games remaining against Sunny Hills and Fullerton before finishing the regular season at home against Sonora, which is tied with Troy for second place.

RULES CHANGE

A rule change that went into effect this season is the elimination of the one-and-one free-throw shooting situation that began with the seventh team foul of a half.

Now teams are awarded two free throws when the opposing team has reached five team fouls in each quarter. Teams begin the following quarter with zero team fouls.

Coaches like it, including Canyon’s Nate Harrison.

“I feel like we’re shooting fewer free throws because of it,” Harrison said. “I think it’s been good for the flow of the game. It’s been a good rule.”

PLAYOFFS

The CIF-SS boys basketball playoff brackets will be released Feb. 4 at noon. Before the brackets come out the CIF-SS will announce which teams received at-large spots in the playoffs.

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​ Orange County Register 

Angels hope Robert Stephenson and his new slider can add consistency to bullpen

• January 23, 2024

Robert Stephenson said he doesn’t consider the new pitch that turned around his season to be a new pitch at all.

The Angels freshly-signed reliever did acknowledge it was different, though.

“I still call it a slider,” Stephenson said of the pitch sometimes identified as a cutter. “It’s the exact same grip I used with my slider before. I just released a little bit different now so might move a little differently, but it’s still the same grip.”

Whatever you call the tweak the Tampa Bay Rays made with Stephenson after they acquired him last June, it seems to be largely responsible for the three-year, $33-million deal that became official on Tuesday.

Stephenson, 30, had a 5.14 ERA in two months with the Pittsburgh Pirates and a 4.90 ERA in parts of seven previous major league seasons, before the Rays suggested the change to his slider.

After that, Stephenson had a 2.35 ERA with 60 strikeouts in 38⅓ innings.

“He had a new toy, with the change of speed on his slider, and he was one of the best, if not the best, relievers in baseball over the last 40 innings,” Angels general manager Perry Minasian said.

That’s why the Angels were willing to make a relatively large investment for a setup man. The Angels also hedged their bet by including in the contract a $2.5 million club option that can be exercised if Stephenson spends 130 consecutive days on the injured list with an elbow issue. It is essentially insurance that allows the Angels to get back any season that Stephenson might miss because of Tommy John surgery. There is no buyout.

“I expect myself to be healthy every year,” Stephenson said, “but if something happens to my elbow where I end up getting hurt and missing time for it, it feels fair that on the backside I’d get a little bit more time with the Angels than originally planned.”

Stephenson also expressed confidence that his performance in his breakout season is sustainable. He said, besides the new way he started throwing his slider, he also had a new approach with the Rays.

“Just being more aggressive and trying to put guys in a hole quicker,” Stephenson said.

The Angels’ bullpen needed plenty of help after finishing 25th in the majors with a 4.88 ERA last year. Closer Carlos Estévez was solid in the ninth inning for about two-thirds of the season, but the Angels had issues all season setting him up.

The Angels had a 5.28 ERA in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings last season. They were outscored by 113 runs in those innings.

“For us to win more games and especially compete, we have to be better in the middle innings,” Minasian said.

Stephenson would seem to go into camp as the Angels’ eighth-inning reliever, with Estévez handling the ninth. The Angels also have newly signed right-handers Luis Garcia and Adam Cimber, along with returning pitchers José Soriano, Ben Joyce, Andrew Wantz and Jimmy Herget.

The highest lefty on the depth chart is probably Adam Kolarek, who is not even on the 40-man roster.

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“Do we have to (add a lefty)? Not necessarily,” Minasian said. “But it would be nice obviously to mix in a lefty or two, if we can.”

Minasian said the Angels are still open to additions in all areas.

“Definitely not done from an offseason standpoint,” he said. “It’s got to be the right fit. It’s got to make sense. But I do believe there’s still players out there that can help us improve and, and make us a more competitive club.”

NOTE

The Angels reportedly agreed to a minor league deal with infielder Miguel Sanó. Sanó, 30, has a career .808 OPS in parts of eight big league seasons with the Minnesota Twins, but he did not play in 2023.

​ Orange County Register 

California suffers largest job-growth drop in US

• January 23, 2024

”Survey says” looks at various rankings and scorecards judging geographic locations while noting these grades are best seen as a mix of artful interpretation and data.

Buzz: California’s job growth was essentially cut in half by the coronavirus and the state’s reaction to the pandemic.

Source: My trusty spreadsheet looked at employment stats for the state and 29 regional job markets from the Employment Development Dept. and the Bureau of Labor Statistics – focusing on before and after 2019, the year before the pandemic hit. Essentially, this math asks, “What if COVID-19 never happened?” by assuming job creation continued the last four years along its 2015-19 pace.

Topline

Yes, California added 640,300 jobs in the four years through 2023. So all the job losses from the coronavirus business limitations have been refilled, and then some.

But this job growth is 743,000 short of the 1.38 million workers added in pre-pandemic 2015-19.

California’s job-creation shortfall ranks as the largest among the states, as the Golden State fell from No. 1 for new jobs in 2015-19 to No. 3 in 2019-23.

And this hiring slowdown equals a 54% cut in job creation between these two, four-year periods.

Details

The drop in hiring was widespread across the state, as shrinking employment growth was found in 25 of the 29 job markets tracked.

Look at the chill in the state’s largest job markets …

Los Angeles County: 195,500 slower job growth – 79,000 hires in 2019-23 vs. 274,500 added staff for 2015-19. That’s a 71% cooling vs. the pre-pandemic pace.

San Francisco: 113,800 short – 26,300 past four years vs. 140,100 for 2015-19. That’s off 81%.

Orange County: 88,900 short – 39,000 past four years vs. 127,900 for 2015-19. That’s off 70%.

Oakland-Berkeley: 81,300 short – 11,400 past four years vs. 92,800 for 2015-19. That’s off 88%.

Inland Empire: 70,500 short – 128,400 past four years vs. 198,900 for 2015-19. That’s off 35%.

San Jose-Santa Clara: 63,600 short – 36,500 past four years vs. 100,100 for 2015-19. That’s off 64%.

San Diego County: 48,300 short – 69,900 past four years vs. 118,200 for 2015-19. That’s off 41%.

Sacramento: 36,900 short – 67,600 past four years vs. 104,500 for 2015-19. That’s off 35%.

By the way, job creation improved in five smaller markets in the last four years. Visalia-Porterville jobs expanded by 2,800; Bakersfield was up 2,600, Stockton was 1,800 ahead, El Centro hiring grew by 700 and Yuba City was up 300.

Details

California’s job market was a prime example of collateral damage from the state’s battle to halt the spread of coronavirus.

The hiring scene also suffered from a lack of job candidates due to various factors, including a slow but steady decline in population.

Please note that this job-creation shortfall isn’t a California-only quirk.

In the other 49 states and the District of Columbia, 4.6 million jobs were added in the past four years, vs. 7.7 million in 2015-19. That 3.1 million hiring shortfall equals a 40% dip in job creation.

Still, between those four-year periods, 10 states saw improvements in their hiring pace: Texas added 191,900 more workers in 2019-23 vs. 2015-19 followed by Montana (11,200), North Dakota (10,300), South Dakota (9,400), Arkansas (8,100), Wyoming (8,000), Kentucky (5,800), Alaska (5,500), Idaho (4,300), and Kansas (700).

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at [email protected]

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​ Orange County Register 

Deepfake audio of Biden alarms experts in lead-up to US elections

• January 23, 2024

Margi Murphy | (TNS) Bloomberg News

No political deepfake has alarmed the world’s disinformation experts more than the doctored audio message of U.S. President Joe Biden that began circulating over the weekend.

In the phone message, a voice edited to sound like Biden urged voters in New Hampshire not to cast their ballots in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

“Save your vote for the November election,” the phone message went. It even made use of one of Biden’s signature phrases: “What a bunch of malarkey.” In reality, the president isn’t on the ballot in the New Hampshire race — and voting in the primary doesn’t preclude people from participating in November’s election.

Many have warned that new artificial intelligence-powered video and image generators will be used this year for political gain, while representation for nearly half of the world is on the line in polls.

But it’s audio deepfakes that have experts worried now.

They’re easy to edit, cheap to produce and particularly difficult to trace. Combine a convincing phone message with a voter registration database, and a bad actor has a powerful weapon that even the most advanced election systems are ill-equipped to handle, researchers say.

“The political deepfake moment is here,’’ said Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy think tank Public Citizen. He called on lawmakers to put in place protections against fake audio and video recordings to avert “electoral chaos.”

The fake Biden message comes as an increasing number of U.S. political campaigns use AI software to reach constituents en masse — and as investors are pouring money into voice-cloning startups.

On Monday, while the deepfake phone message was making the rounds, the AI voice-replicating startup ElevenLabs announced it had raised a new round of funding that valued the company at $1.1 billion.

The doctored political recording wasn’t the first. Last year, audio deepfakes spread on social media ahead of Slovakia’s parliamentary elections, including one clip in which party leader Michal Simecka appeared to be discussing a plan to purchase votes. Political use of video and audio deepfakes have meanwhile proven limited.

It’s unclear exactly how the Biden message was generated. New Hampshire’s attorney general was investigating the call on Monday. But tracking the fake audio to its source will prove especially difficult because it was spread by telephone as opposed to online, according to Joan Donovan, an assistant professor of journalism and emerging media studies at Boston University. Audio messages delivered by phone don’t come with the same digital trail.

“This is an indication of the next generation of dirty tricks,” Donovan said.

There’s another reason the fake Biden clip was particularly worrisome to disinformation researchers and election officials. It confirmed their biggest fear: Bad actors are using deepfakes not just to influence public opinion but to stop voters from coming to the polls altogether.

“Even if such misinformation introduces confusion that only impacts a few hundred or thousands of votes, it could be meaningful in terms of the results and outcome,” said Nick Diakopoulos, a professor at Northwestern University who has researched manipulated audio and elections.

The U.S. Federal Election Commission has taken small steps toward regulating political deepfakes, but it has yet to clamp down on the technologies helping to generate them. Some states have proposed their own laws to curb deepfakes.

Elections officials are running training exercises to prepare for an onslaught. Around 100 federal and state officials assembled in Colorado in August to brainstorm the best response to a hypothetical fake video containing bogus elections information.

Deepfakes were the focus of another exercise in Arizona in December when officials worked through a scenario in which a video of Secretary of State Adrian Fontes was falsified to spread inaccurate information.

Meanwhile, deepfake detection tools are still in their infancy and remain inconclusive.

On Monday, for example, ElevenLabs’ own detection tool indicated that the Biden call was unlikely to have been created using cloning software — even as deepfake detection startup Clarity said it was more than 80% likely to be a deepfake.

_____

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Dodgers set to add lefty James Paxton to starting rotation

• January 23, 2024

LOS ANGELES – The Dodgers are putting the finishing touches on a near-complete makeover of their starting rotation.

The Dodgers are reportedly close to signing free agent left-hander James Paxton to a one-year contract for $11 or $12 million. The deal would also include bonus clauses that could take it higher. The team has not announced the signing officially yet.

The signing would take the Dodgers’ projected payroll for 2024 past $310 million and into the highest tear of the Competitive Balance Tax.

The addition of the 35-year-old Paxton means the Dodgers will head to spring training with a starting rotation of Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Walker Buehler (who is expected to join the rotation at some point early in the season), Bobby Miller and James Paxton. Young starters Emmet Sheehan, Gavin Stone and Landon Knack will compete as depth pieces. Paxton is the only left-hander in the group.

A year ago, the Dodgers opened the season with a starting rotation of Julio Urias, Dustin May, Clayton Kershaw, Noah Syndergaard and Michael Grove. Only Kershaw was still starting games at the end of the season. Only May (recovering from elbow surgery) and Grove (likely ticketed for a bullpen role) are still with the Dodgers now.

With 156 career starts over 10 seasons with the Seattle Mariners, New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, Paxton is the most experienced pitcher in this year’s group. But he continues the Dodgers’ well-established willingness to take on pitchers with an injury history.

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Paxton has made more than 20 starts just three times in those 10 seasons (2017-19). He threw a no-hitter for the Mariners in 2018 but finished the season on the Injured List with a back injury. He eventually underwent surgery and made just five starts during the shortened 2020 season.

He left his first start of the 2021 season with elbow discomfort and underwent Tommy John surgery which sidelined him until 2023.

He made two trips to the IL last season (for a hamstring injury and knee inflammation) but went 7-5 with a 4.50 ERA in 19 starts. Paxton didn’t finish well. After going 5-1 with a 2.73 ERA in 10 starts before the All-Star break (and winning the American League Pitcher of the Month award), Paxton was 2-4 with a 6.98 ERA in nine starts after the break before ending the season on the IL with the knee issue.

​ Orange County Register 

‘I’m not safe here’: Schools ignore federal rules on restraint and seclusion

• January 23, 2024

Fred Clasen-Kelly | KFF Health News (TNS)

Photos show blood splattered across a small bare-walled room in a North Carolina school where a second grader repeatedly punched himself in the face in the fall of 2019, according to the child’s mom.

His mother, Michelle Staten, said her son, who has autism and other conditions, reacted as many children with disabilities would when he was confined to the seclusion room at Buckhorn Creek Elementary.

“I still feel a lot of guilt about it as a parent,” said Staten, who sent the photos to the federal government in a 2022 complaint letter. “My child was traumatized.”

Documents show that restraint and seclusion were part of the special education plan the Wake County Public School System designed for Staten’s son. Starting when he was in kindergarten in 2017, Staten said, her son was repeatedly restrained or forced to stay alone in a seclusion room.

Federal law requires school districts like Wake County to tell the U.S. Department of Education every time they physically restrain or seclude a student.

But the district, one of the largest in the nation, with nearly 160,000 children and more than 190 schools, reported for nearly a decade, starting in 2011, that it had zero incidents of restraint or seclusion, according to federal data.

Staten said she was alarmed to learn about the district’s reporting practices, and in March 2022 she sent a complaint letter to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. When the district set up her son’s special education plan, she wrote, “they said things like ‘it’s for his safety and the safety of others.’”

Further, she wrote, in his district files, “nowhere in the record was there documentation of the restraints and seclusion.”

The practice is “used and is used at often very high rates in ways that are quite damaging to students,” said Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for the Office for Civil Rights.

The Department of Education says it is meeting with schools that underreport cases of restraint and seclusion, tactics used disproportionately on students with disabilities and children of color like Staten’s son.

Lhamon called the practices “a life-or-death topic” and noted the importance of collecting accurate federal data. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona announced new guidance to schools in 2022, saying that, “too often, students with disabilities face harsh and exclusionary disciplinary action.”

‘Children With Bruises’

For more than a decade, school nurses, pediatricians, lawmakers, and others have warned that restraint and seclusion can cause long-lasting trauma and escalate negative behaviors. In the worst cases, children have reportedly died or suffered serious injury.

“In an ideal world, it should be banned,” said Stacey Gahagan, an attorney and civil rights expert who has successfully represented families in seclusion and restraint cases. The tactics are “being used in ways that are inappropriate. I’m seeing parents with pictures of children with bruises and children afraid to go to school.”

No federal law prohibits restraint and seclusion, leaving a patchwork of practices across states and school districts with little oversight and accountability, according to parents and advocates for people with disabilities.

Tens of thousands of restraint and seclusion cases are reported to the federal government in any given year. But those are likely undercounts, say parents and advocates for students, because the system relies on school staff and administrators to self-report. It’s a failing even the Department of Education acknowledges.

“Sometimes school communities are making a deliberate choice not to record,” Lhamon said.

The Wake County Public School System declined to answer questions about Staten’s case for this article, citing student privacy law.

A 2022 report to Congress found North Carolina schools handed lengthy suspensions or expulsions to students with disabilities at the highest rate in the nation.

The district in 2022 submitted revised restraint and seclusion data to the federal government dating to the 2015-16 school year, said Matt Dees, a spokesperson for the Wake County Public School System, where Staten’s son attended school. In a written statement, he said federal reporting rules had been confusing. “There are different guidelines for state and federal reporting, which has contributed to issues with the reporting data,” Dees said.

But parents and advocates for children with disabilities don’t buy that reasoning. “That explanation would be plausible if they reported any” cases, Gahagan said. “But they reported zero for years in the largest school district in our state.”

Hannah Russell, who is part of a network of parents and advocates in North Carolina that helps families navigate the system, said even when parents present pictures of their injured children, the school systems will say “it didn’t happen.”

In North Carolina, 91% of districts reported zero incidents of restraint and seclusion during the 2015-16 academic year, the second-highest percentage in the nation after Hawaii, a federal report found.

“This was a problem before covid,” said Russell, a former special education teacher who said one of her own children with a disability was restrained and secluded in school. “It is an astronomical problem now.”

North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction, which oversees public schools statewide, did not make officials available for interviews and did not answer written questions.

In an email, spokesperson Jeanie McDowell said only that schools receive training on restraint and seclusion reporting requirements.

Educators are generally allowed to use restraint and seclusion to protect students and others from imminent threats to safety. But critics point to cases in which children have died or suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and other injuries for minor transgressions such as failing to stay seated or being “uncooperative.”

Zero Incidents Reported

In 2019, the Government Accountability Office, which conducts research for Congress, said some school systems almost never tell the federal government about the use of restraint and seclusion. About 70% of U.S. school districts report zero incidents.

The Department of Education’s “quality control processes for data it collects from public school districts on incidents of restraint and seclusion are largely ineffective or do not exist,” a 2020 GAO report said.

Lhamon said her office is conducting investigations across the country and asking districts to correct inaccurate data. The Department of Education wants school districts to voluntarily comply with federal civil rights law protecting students with disabilities. If they don’t, officials can terminate federal financial assistance to districts or refer cases to the Department of Justice.

The Wake County Public School System settled a lawsuit last year after the district did not report any use of restraint or seclusion in the 2017-18 school year, even though a student was secluded or restrained and witnessed the practices used with other children, according to Gahagan, who represented the student’s family.

As part of the settlement, the district agreed to notify parents by the end of each school day if their child had been restrained or secluded that day.

Gahagan said transparency would increase in Wake County but that problems persist across the country. Schools sometimes keep seclusion incidents hidden from parents by calling them “timeouts” or other euphemisms, Gahagan said.

“For most parents a ‘timeout’ doesn’t mean being put in a closet,” Gahagan said. “What is the recourse for a parent? There are not a lot of checks and balances. There is not enough accountability.”

Still, Gahagan, a former teacher, expressed sympathy for educators. Schools lack money for counselors and training that would help teachers, principals, and other staff learn de-escalation techniques, which could reduce reliance on physical interventions, she said.

Jessica Ryan said that in New York City, her son, who has autism, received counseling, occupational therapy, and a classroom with a standard education teacher and a special education teacher.

But when Ryan’s family moved last year to Wake County, home to more than 1 million people and part of the famed Research Triangle region, she was told he didn’t qualify for any of those services in the district, she said. Soon, her son started getting in trouble at school. He skipped classes or was written up for disruptive behavior.

Then in March, she said, her husband got a phone call from their son, who whispered, “Come get me. I’m not safe here.”

Portions of photos sent to Michelle Staten from an official at her son’s former elementary school in North Carolina. The images show blood splattered across a small, bare-walled seclusion room where, Staten said, her son repeatedly punched himself in the face in 2019. Critics say restraint and seclusion are tactics used disproportionately on students with disabilities and children of color, like Staten’s son. (Michelle Staten/TNS)

After the 9-year-old allegedly kicked a foam soccer ball and hit a school employee, he was physically restrained by two male school staffers, according to Ryan. The incident left the boy with a bloody nose and bruises on his leg, spine, and thigh, the medical records say.

The Wake County school district did not respond to questions about the events described in the documents.

After the incident, Ryan said, her son refused to go to school. He missed the remainder of fourth grade.

“It is disgusting,” said Ryan, 39, who said she was a special education teacher in Wake County schools until she resigned in June. “Our kids are being abused.”

The district did not record the incident in PowerSchool, a software system that alerts parents to grades, test scores, attendance, and discipline, Ryan said.

In August, Ryan’s son began classes at another Wake County school. By late October, school and medical records say, he was restrained or secluded twice in less than two months.

Guy Stephens, founder and executive director of the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Maryland, said he founded the group more than four years ago after he learned his own son was afraid to go to school because he had been repeatedly restrained and secluded.

Stephens said some children subjected to the practice may start to act out violently at home, harm themselves, or fall into severe depression — impacts so adverse, he said, that they are a common part of the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

“When you go hands-on, you are putting more people in danger,” Stephens said. “These lives are being set on a path to ruin.”

In May, federal lawmakers proposed the Keeping All Students Safe Act, a bill that would make it illegal for schools receiving federal taxpayer money to seclude children or use restraint techniques that restrict breathing. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, and other supporters have said a federal law is needed, in part, because some districts have intentionally misreported numbers of restraints and seclusions.

Advocates acknowledge Congress is unlikely to pass the bill anytime soon.

School administrators, including AASA, a national association of school superintendents, have historically opposed similar legislation, saying that restraint and seclusion are sometimes needed to protect students and staff in dangerous situations.

AASA spokesperson James Minichello declined comment for this article.

Staten said she begged officials at Buckhorn Creek Elementary and the district to remove restraint and seclusion from her child’s special education plan, documents show. Officials denied the request.

“I feel like they were gaslighting me into accepting restraint and seclusion,” Staten said. “It was manipulative.”

Staten and her husband now home-school their son. She said he no longer has emotional outbursts like he did when he was in public school, because he feels safe.

“It’s like a whole new kid,” Staten said. “It sometimes feels like that was all a bad dream.”

(KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Want to observe how Orange County’s primary ballots are counted? Here’s how

• January 23, 2024

From processing mail ballots to ensuring the software is tabulating votes correctly, there are a bevy of opportunities to observe various parts of the 2024 primary election process.

A tool meant to ensure transparency and accuracy in the election system, the observation system is open to any member of the public, according to the Orange County Registrar of Voters.

The Registrar has a full schedule on its website of when and what can be observed, but some significant activities include:

• Feb. 6: Observers can watch the accuracy testing of the county’s voting system, from the preparation of test ballots to the scanning of those on all devices. Those watching can also check the processing and counting of mail ballots starting this day; that includes the collection, return process, signature verification and sorting of ballots. Accepted mail ballots, the Registrar notes, cannot be actually counted until 8 p.m. on March 5, the primary day.

• Feb. 24: The first batch of vote centers open on this day where the processing of conditional voter registration and provisional ballots begins and can be observed. More vote centers will open on March 2.

• March 5: It’s Election Day, and watchers can observe as accepted mail ballots as well as in-person votes will begin to be tabulated by the voting system.

• March 15: Observers can watch as the Registrar uses test ballots on all voting devices to ensure the system is still accurately tabulating votes.

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Observers are not required to RSVP to take part in the process, said Enedina Chhim, a spokesperson for the Registrar of Voters.

Observers can watch audits and vote tabulations, take notes, challenge whether staff are following procedures and ask questions of a vote center lead or “observation ambassador” (Registrar staff assigned to assist observers, explain processes, answer questions and facilitate observer challenges) as long it does not interrupt the conduct of the election process. Observers will be given a badge upon signing in and must wear it while “maintaining a professional and respectful manner,” according to guidance from the Registrar.

Observers cannot go into an occupied voting booth, display any campaign material, directly challenge a voter, touch election-related equipment or staff, prevent other watchers from observing or use cell phones or cameras outside of designated areas, according to the guidance.

Ballot processing, audits, testing and tallying will occur at the Registrar’s Santa Ana office, 1300 South Grand Ave, Building C, but observers can also visit the vote center and drop box locations around the county to check daily operations there.

In addition to observing in person, the Registrar will set up live streams, including on election night.

More dates and information about election observing can be found at the Registrar’s website, ocvote.gov/observe. Questions can also be directed to the Registrar’s office by calling 714-567-7600.

​ Orange County Register 

Appeals court lets Trump gag order stand in Jan. 6 case

• January 23, 2024

By Hannah Rabinowitz, Katelyn Polantz and Devan Cole | CNN

The federal appeals court in Washington, DC, declined to rehear arguments over whether former President Donald Trump can be prohibited from talking about witnesses and court staff while he awaits trial in the special counsel’s January 6 criminal case.

Trump has unsuccessfully tried to challenge the gag order placed on him by Judge Tanya Chutkan late last year through appeals.

The 11 judges from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday declined to touch the case after a three-judge panel previously upheld the gag order against Trump. There were no statements or dissents made by any of the judges.

Trump can appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, and his attorneys have previously indicated that they would appeal the matter to the nation’s highest court if necessary.

CNN has reached out to Trump’s legal team for comment.

In a unanimous decision issued last month, the three appellate judges said that Trump can be barred from talking about witnesses as well as prosecutors, the court staff and their family members.

But the court said the gag order does not apply to comments made about special counsel Jack Smith and narrowed the prohibition Trump had regarding speaking about witnesses in the case, a change from the original gag order.

The three judges on the panel — Patricia Millett, Nina Pillard and Bradley Garcia, all Democratic appointees — found Trump’s words on the public stage could undermine the fairness of a jury trial, sway or intimidate witnesses and imperil court staff. The court said that justifies limiting Trump’s speech, even while he campaigns to return to the presidency.

“Mr. Trump’s documented pattern of speech and its demonstrated real-time, real-world consequences pose a significant and imminent threat to the functioning of the criminal trial process in this case,” the appeals court wrote.

This story has been updated with additional details.

​ Orange County Register