Former Dist. 3 Supervisor write-in candidate, Michelle Morrow, 56 of Grover Beach, was sentenced to 90-days in County Jail after pleading to election-related crimes.
A former write-in Supervisory candidate has been sentenced to 3-months in jail for election-related crimes, the District Attorney’s Office announced.
Michelle Marie Morrow, 56 of Grover Beach, received a sentence of 90 days in County Jail plus 2-years of probation after pleading “No contest” to felony charges of filing false nomination papers and fraudulent voting, following the March 2024 Primary Election, where she was an officially declared write-in candidate challenging Dist. 3 Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg. Morrow was formally charged on Sep. 11, 2024, the D.A.’s news release said, and her plea was made March 5, 2025.
Originally, she was also charged with suspicion of voter registration fraud and perjury, charges that were apparently dropped with the plea agreement.
Under her initial plea, the Probation Department recommended that she be sentenced to “no more than 180 days in jail given Morrow’s lack of remorse and lack of insight into her criminality,” the news release said.
The judge, the release said, sentenced Morrow to 90-days in jail with 2-years of felony probation, “focusing on Morrow’s lack of criminal history and other factors unique to her situation.”
The D.A.’s Office faced some criticism for the prosecution, as Morrow was a conservative and Otiz-Legg a liberal (Supervisor races are non-partisan), and the case arose during the height of the so-called “law fare” being waged against President Donald Trump, but the prosecutor in the case denied the suspicions.
“I want to make crystal clear,” said Prosecutor, Dep. D.A. Ben Blumenthal, “Ms. Morrow was not prosecuted because of her political beliefs, or her platform. Ms. Morrow was prosecuted because she deliberately and repeatedly lied to the voters of San Luis Obispo County in an unlawful attempt to get elected to a position she knew she was not legally qualified to hold.”
The case boiled down to Morrow registering to vote in the wrong supervisorial district. She was a resident of Dist. 4 but registered and tried to run in Dist. 3 as a write-in candidate, and also voted in Dist. 3.
When candidates for office file nomination papers, they do so under penalty of perjury, and any deliberate lies told on those forms, can be prosecuted.
“It is alleged,” said a news release last September after she was charged, “that Michelle M. Morrow committed the crime of Voter Registration Fraud when she registered to vote at an address where she did not reside.
“Additional offenses were committed on Feb. 16, 2024 when she submitted paperwork to run for the Dist. 3 seat on the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors, when in fact she lived in Dist. 4. She did so under penalty of perjury.”
Morrow sought to challenge Dist. 3 Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg, who had been appointed by the Governor to the Dist. 3 seat after former Supervisor Adam Hill committed suicide sometime after winning the seat at the March 2020 Primary Election.
Hill was under investigation by the FBI for corruption in connection with political favors he gave to local marijuana entrepreneur, Helios Dayspring, to help him get County permits for marijuana growing operations.
Dayspring too was charged by the FBI for bribery and served some time in prison but has since been released and reportedly sold all of his marijuana holdings, including the Natural Healing Center or NHC, a dispensary located in Downtown Morro Bay.
Ortiz-Legg was appointed to fill Hill’s seat by Gov. Gavin Newsome, but under State Law she had to face voters in 2022. She won the right to continue to serve out Hill’s term and was required to run in the same district as Hill.
However, after the 2020 Census, the majority of Supervisors adopted a new, dramatically different district boundary map, which changed the boundaries of all five districts.
But a judge ruled that Ortiz-Legg had to run using the old Dist. 3 map and she prevailed in a 3-way race. That re-districting decision took away the right to vote from voters in Morro Bay and SLO, which had both been moved into a new, Dist. 3.
Los Osos voters too were aced out of that election when the South Bay was moved into Dist. 5, which was not up for election in 2022.
After the 2022 elections, the Board majority changed again, and the new majority threw out the 2022 Map and changed the districts back, placing Ortiz-Legg back into the old Dist. 3 boundary (including Pismo Beach, Avila Beach and the southern part of SLO).
That second change once again aced Morro Bay, SLO and Los Osos out of the Supervisor’s Election of 2024.
When the 2024 election season came around, no one had stepped up to challenge Ortiz-Legg until Morrow filed write-in papers to run a month before the Election.
Still, her write-in challenge was not really much of a challenge, as Morrow garnered only 860 votes in the March 2024 Primary.
These events put the new County Clerk-Recorder in somewhat of a tight spot, as she had some explaining to do.
“There is nothing my office takes more seriously than upholding the law and conducting local elections that adhere to California Elections Code,” Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano said at the time of Morrow’s arrest. “The subject of election security has become a hot topic in recent months and years, both nationally and here at home. I appreciate the passion community members have for transparency in the elections process, and I also appreciate that, when warranted, local law enforcement gets involved.”
While it might seem like a pretty straightforward case, news reports at the time, clouded the waters somewhat.
New Times reported that Morrow was first determined to be ineligible to run because she had not lived in Dist. 3 the required 30 days in order to run for office.
County Clerk-Recorder Cano reportedly said Morrow would become eligible to register on Feb. 15 (2024) and needed to submit her candidacy paperwork by Feb. 19, a deadline she met on Feb. 16 using an address in Grover Beach.
But the D.A. claimed she never actually lived in Grover Beach, which made her registration, candidacy and voting all violations of the Election Code.
Her case is reminiscent of another elected official’s sordid mess over residency. Former SLO Mayor and City Councilman, Allen Settle, was accused of using a San Luis Obispo address for a rental property that he owned for election purposes when he actually lived in another home in Arroyo Grande. This was while he was Mayor and an elected City Councilman.
Though these suspicions followed him for years, Settle, now retired from public office, was never charged with election fraud.
