The man holding the keys to Los Angeles County’s vote count has spent much of his career navigating election controversy.
Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, whose compensation totals nearly $450,000 a year, is once again facing scrutiny as hundreds of thousands of ballots remain uncounted and several major races hang in the balance
Throughout his career in election administration, Logan has faced scrutiny and criticism stemming from several high-profile election disputes in multiple states.
Before arriving in California, Logan served as elections director for King County, Washington, overseeing elections for roughly one-third of the state’s voters.
His tenure became closely associated with Washington state’s fiercely contested 2004 governor’s race.
Republican candidate Dino Rossi initially appeared headed for victory.
But after a series of recounts, Democrat Christine Gregoire was certified as governor-elect, despite trailing in two machine tabulations. Gregoire ultimately prevailed in an unprecedented hand recount of nearly 2.9 million ballots, winning the race by just 129 votes.
The race triggered statewide litigation, multiple investigations and months of political debate.
Although courts ultimately upheld the election results, the recount battle prompted years of criticism from some Republicans and repeated calls for Logan’s resignation.
In a 2008 profile, the Los Angeles Times reported that many Washington Republicans remained sharply critical of Logan’s handling of the election, while Democratic leaders defended his performance and praised his leadership.
Logan left Washington in 2006 and joined the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s Office as deputy to then-Registrar Conny McCormack.
He later succeeded McCormack as the county’s top elections official, taking charge of the nation’s largest local election jurisdiction.
Logan later faced criticism in Los Angeles over several election-administration disputes.
One of the most prominent occurred in 2008 when nearly 50,000 decline-to-state voters cast ballots that initially were not counted because they failed to mark an additional party-preference bubble required to participate in certain presidential primaries.
According to Los Angeles Times reporting at the time, the dispute prompted criticism from election activists and led some critics to call for Logan’s resignation.
County supervisors ultimately backed Logan after election officials developed a process that validated and counted many of the disputed ballots.
Logan also oversaw one of the largest election modernization projects in county history.
In 2018, Los Angeles County awarded election technology company Smartmatic a contract worth approximately $282 million to help design and build the county’s Voting Solutions for All People, or VSAP, voting system.
The project drew scrutiny from some election-security experts before its countywide debut.
According to a 2020 Politico report, California’s certification review and outside security researchers identified multiple digital and physical vulnerabilities in the VSAP system.
Politico reported that some experts warned unresolved flaws could potentially allow someone with physical access to election equipment or backend systems to alter software or disrupt election operations.
Los Angeles County officials told Politico they had fixed or mitigated many of the issues identified during testing, while some outside election-security advocates argued additional vulnerabilities should be resolved before the system was deployed.
The county-owned system debuted countywide in 2020, replacing aging voting equipment with touchscreen ballot-marking devices and a network of voting centers throughout Los Angeles County.
The partnership later received national attention after Smartmatic became the subject of election-fraud allegations following the 2020 presidential election.
Smartmatic has repeatedly denied those allegations and later secured major legal settlements from media organizations that aired false claims about the company.
Questions about the pace of ballot counting also emerged during California’s 2022 primary election.
Los Angeles County took weeks to finalize results as election workers processed large numbers of vote-by-mail, provisional and conditional ballots.
Several races remained unresolved long after voting ended, drawing criticism from some candidates, political observers and voters.
Similar complaints resurfaced during the 2024 election cycle.
Lengthy counting process prompted renewed scrutiny from some candidates, political observers and voters.
The California Post visited Los Angeles County’s 144,000-square-foot ballot processing facility on Thursday and observed numerous empty workstations and large sections of the operation sitting unused while more than 700,000 ballots remained outstanding.
Logan oversees a department with an annual budget of approximately $337 million and roughly 1,150 authorized positions, according to Los Angeles County budget documents.
The Post reached out to Logan for comment on this story.
