Michael Sanchez had a front-row seat to something he had never experienced before. From his desk in the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, he watched as rumors of a rigged June primary exploded across the internet. It was early June, and the primary election had just concluded, but for Sanchez and his small team, the most intense phase of the work was just beginning. Posts from accounts with thousands of followers were questioning the integrity of the process. Some users cast doubt on the counting of mail ballots. Others pointed to alleged evidence of corruption at polling places. One particularly viral claim insisted that Kobe Bryant, the basketball legend who died in 2020, was still on Los Angeles County voter rolls and had voted. The allegation was false, but it did not matter; it had already become a symbol for a broader narrative of stolen elections. Sanchez, the communications manager who leads the team tasked with tracking election dis- and misinformation, had spent more than a decade at the office. In all those years, he had never seen election misinformation spread so quickly. The volume, the speed, the reach—it was unlike anything he had encountered. And the stakes were immense. Los Angeles County is the most populous county in the country, home to millions of registered voters and a complex election infrastructure. If enough people believed the rumors, the legitimacy of the entire exercise would be called into question. The June primary presented a challenge that went beyond the mechanical work of running an election; it required explaining the election in real time, responding to falsehoods as they were still forming, and doing it all in public, on platforms that reward anger over accuracy. Sanchez knew that trust is fragile, especially in the election administration space. “Trust is such a fragile thing right now,” he said, and he felt the weight of that fragility every time he opened his feed.
Then the pressure became even more intense. On June 3, the day after the primary, President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Democrats were stealing the Los Angeles mayoral race. The accusation was vague but incendiary, and it immediately turned a local election story into a national one. Local and national media organizations began calling the registrar’s office for comment. Federal authorities later opened election-related investigations. Sanchez and his team huddled, trying to assess each claim and decide where to respond. They knew they could not verify every allegation in every post, but they could fact-check some of them. They made a deliberate choice to engage directly in the comments sections of social media, bringing the official voice of the county into spaces that were often hostile and chaotic. When the Kobe Bryant rumor made its way to the county’s X account, the registrar’s office responded in a series of comments. “Kobe was not an LA County voter, and his OC registration is canceled,” they wrote. The correction was short and matter-of-fact, but it carried a deeper message: we are here, we are watching, and we will not let lies define this election. Sanchez’s team was small—no more than five people at any given time—and they were responsible for monitoring a sprawling digital ecosystem. They managed and monitored social media platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and X, using the official @LACountyRRCC account handle. X, according to Sanchez, was by far the highest-volume source of misinformation. The team used a variety of tools to track and manage the flow, but ultimately, much of the work required human judgment. They had to decide which claims were worth responding to, which posts were gaining traction, and which arguments might actually persuade someone. “While my team is relatively small, given the scale,” Sanchez said, “we do utilize and maximize a few different solutions to be able to help manage, track and monitor as much as possible in real time.” They could not be everywhere, but they were trying to be where it mattered most.
None of this was improvisation. Long before the June primary, the county had been preparing for a volatile election season. Election officials had spent months thinking through scenarios ranging from federal interference to changes in mail-in voting rules. They knew that the 2026 election cycle would be unlike any other, with trust in institutions at historic lows and false narratives spreading faster than ever. The county provided updates to the Board of Supervisors in April about how they were preparing for potential disruptions to upcoming local elections. They trained community and county election workers in deescalation and conflict-resolution techniques, so that the people staffing vote centers would know how to respond to angry or hostile voters. They also piloted the Election Resource Liaisons program, an initiative designed to provide an additional layer of support at vote centers. The ERLs were trained volunteers, about 50 of whom were planned for deployment across Los Angeles County during the June primary. Their mission was to be present, to help voters, and to serve as calm, authoritative figures in case federal law enforcement, the military, or the National Guard became involved in the election process. It was a worst-case-scenario plan, but in a climate of heightened political tensions, election officials felt they needed to be ready for anything. Meanwhile, Sanchez and his team were preparing on a different front. The office saw social media as a “cost-effective” way to reach millions of voters and to engage with questions and misinformation in real time. The approach was not purely defensive. The team wanted to get ahead of the conversation, to publish accurate information before rumors took root, and to build a following that would see the registrar’s office as a reliable source. They even allowed themselves to have a little fun when it seemed appropriate. “We want to try and stay vibrant,” Sanchez said. “We want to make sure people who are reading and following our account are engaged.” The tone was deliberate. They understood that if their posts looked like dry government press releases, nobody would read them. If they wanted to compete with viral misinformation, they had to be as compelling, or at least as present, as the people spreading falsehoods.
The misinformation did not stop when the polls closed. In some ways, it became more intense. As election workers continued the slow, painstaking process of verifying and counting ballots, the space between election night and certification became a breeding ground for lies. One viral claim alleged that Republican nominee Spencer Pratt had received zero votes in the mayoral primary. The registrar’s office answered with a blend of correction and confidence. “Fact check this — false report and was not from late last night,” they wrote in a comment. Then, after the next update, they followed up: “Nope. Pratt gained 10,336 votes in today’s update.” Another false story claimed that homeless residents on Skid Row were being paid to vote for Mayor Karen Bass. The registrar’s office responded with a single, blunt word: “No.” But not every lie could be dispatched with a one-liner. On June 11, the office responded to an X post claiming that thousands of ballots were being rejected, including ballots cast for specific candidates. The registrar’s office called the claim “incorrect/deceptive” and explained that voters whose ballots had been challenged because of missing or mismatched signatures had been contacted and given an opportunity to fix them. “All have been contacted with information on how to respond and ensure their ballot can be counted,” the office wrote. The response was crucial, because vote-by-mail ballots made up the vast majority of ballots cast in the primary. Those ballots are not counted in a single night. They move through a careful process of signature verification, address confirmation, and processing. Each ballot has to be examined before it can be tabulated. That process is time-consuming by design; it exists to ensure that every valid vote is counted and that fraudulent votes are rejected. But the slowness also created a window for misinformation. It took the registrar’s office 24 days to certify the June 2 primary. During that period, every day brought new opportunities for rumors to spread, and every rumor required a response.
When the certification was finally complete, the team took stock of what had happened. “June really taught us the scale and the pace,” Sanchez said. “We identified that there’s room for continued education on areas of our office.” The claims that had surfaced again and again during the primary revealed significant gaps in public understanding about how elections actually work. Many people did not understand why election results change as more ballots are counted, or why the registrar’s office cannot simply release a complete count on election night. Many did not understand why some voters receive notices asking them to correct their ballot signatures, or why a signature mismatch could cause a ballot to be rejected. Sanchez’s team is now developing a social media framework built around those recurring questions. The goal is to have clear, accessible explainers ready before misinformation spreads, so that when a false claim appears, accurate information is already available. The office also plans to continue responding to specific inaccuracies as they gain traction, using the same platforms where the misinformation is circulating. The approach is a mix of proactive and reactive communication. But Sanchez is also thinking about a different kind of audience. It’s not just the people who comment, like, or share. It’s the people who read quietly, who see a viral rumor and then scroll down to the replies looking for clarity. They may never engage with the registrar’s account, but they are absorbing the information. They are making decisions based on what they see. “We think it’s important to be online,” Sanchez said. “We will continue to be online.” In a time when election workers have become targets of harassment, when federal agents can show up at vote centers, and when conspiracy theories can spread to millions of people in a matter of hours, that simple commitment is an act of courage. It would be easier to retreat behind official statements and press releases. It would be safer to avoid the comment sections entirely. But Sanchez and his team believe that democracy requires presence.
At the heart of this story is a question about what it takes to maintain a democratic society. It takes laws, ballots, polling places, and trained workers. But it also takes trust. And trust is not something that can be re-established by a single press release or a well-produced video. It is built in small moments, in the comments section of a viral post, in the patient response to a false claim, in the willingness to show up in the same spaces where the lies are spreading. The Kobe Bryant rumor was debunked. The Spencer Pratt vote-count hoax was corrected. The Skid Row bribery allegation was refuted. The ballot rejection story was explained. None of those corrections were permanent victories; new rumors have already begun to circulate ahead of November. But each correction matters. Each response is a signal to the public that someone is paying attention, that the election is not being run by hidden forces, that the people involved are doing their best to ensure a fair and accurate count. It also matters for the silent readers—the voters who may not post or comment but who see a false claim and then see a calm, factual reply from an official account. That moment can be enough to make them hesitate before sharing the lie. Sanchez has spent more than a decade in election administration, and he has never seen trust in the process so fragile. But he has also seen how a small, dedicated team can push back against the flood. The work is never done. It evolves with every election, every new platform, every new conspiracy theory. Yet Sanchez’s commitment is unchanged. He and his team will continue to monitor, continue to fact-check, and continue to respond. “We think it’s important to be online,” he said. “We will continue to be online.” It may not be the most glamorous form of democratic defense, but it is essential. In the battle for voters’ confidence, the registrar’s office has chosen to fight, one post at a time.