A total of 300 sealed vote-by-mail ballots, a gun, drugs, and stolen mail were found in a car parked at a convenience store in Southern California.
The recovered items are currently being investigated by the authorities.
The items were found last August 16 when Torrance, California police were alerted regarding a man sleeping inside his vehicle parked outside a 7-Eleven store.
“Inside the vehicle, the officers found a loaded handgun, some narcotics, and then they found a bunch of mail and what turned out to be over 300 election ballots in the backseat of the vehicle,” Torrance Police Department’s Sgt. Mark Ponegalek said.
“They appeared to be in a box, but they were also kind of strewn across the backseat of the vehicle and so there was just a large portion of mail in that backseat.”
According to the police, the man possessing the items was a felon. Some Xanax pills and methamphetamine were found in his possession.
The police added that several California driver’s licenses and credit cards named to other people were also found from the man, who was already taken into custody.
Authorities are still investigating how he got the ballots as well as his purpose for possessing it.
“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 said ballots were intended for the recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom slated Sept. 14, the Los Angeles County Registrar’s office said. It said that the ballots were not filled out and submitted by voters.
Additionally, they said no signs of stealing the ballots for the purpose of affecting the election were found. This is because other stolen mail was found from the man, ABC7 reported.
“There’s nothing to indicate this was focused on the election,” the county registrar’s office stated.
