Egged on by Trump, right-wing ecosystem makes baseless claims of California voter fraud

In the immediate days after last week’s primary election, the vast community of right-wing bloggers, X users, podcasters and YouTuber influencers trumpeted that California, the state they love to hate, was turning red.

Early reports of vote-counting in the top-two primary had Republican Steve Hilton, a British-born former Fox News commentator, leading the pack of 61 candidates for governor.

Meanwhile, Republican Spencer Pratt was running second in the race for mayor of Los Angeles, having aired a string of AI-generated parodies of Mayor Karen Bass.

As the count continued, Pratt dropped into third place. As of Monday, Hilton still stood in second place behind Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra, but his lead over billionaire Tom Steyer had narrowed to about 5 percentage points, and the outcome was still uncertain.

Meanwhile, the right-wing media gaggle evolved from jubilation to complaints about how long it was taking to count the votes and allegations, without evidence, that fraud was being committed.

They were joined by President Donald Trump who, in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” accused California officials of “cheating,” citing the protracted ballot count.

“Do you have evidence to support that?” interviewer Kristen Welker asked Trump.

“All I have to do is look,” he replied.

“But sir, that’s not evidence. That’s how they count the votes in California,” Welker persisted.

“No, they’re crooked … just like you’re crooked,” Trump shot back. “Your press is crooked and ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked.

“You’re either crooked or you’re stupid,” he continued. “You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged.”

Finally, Trump decided to “call it quits,” removed his microphone, and told Welker, “Thank you, darling, have a good time.”

With Trump setting the tone, the social media warriors will continue beating the baseless election fraud drum. House Speaker Mike Johnson took a swipe on Monday, saying that “everybody knows instinctively something is wrong.” On Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli posted on X that federal prosecutors were working with the FBI on “multiple election fraud investigations,” but provided no specifics.

Counting votes in California does take a lot of time, a syndrome rooted in decades of efforts by dominant Democrats to increase the numbers of ballots cast. They depict it as enhancing the democratic process, but also believe that it will help them prevail in close elections.

That’s not cheating, but it is certainly partisan motivation, and it began after Democrats suffered a series of setbacks in legislative elections in the late 1970s. To stop the hemorrhage, Democrats gerrymandered legislative and congressional districts after the 1980 census and made it much easier for voters to use so-called absentee ballots to vote by mail.

Ironically, however, they failed to capitalize in the 1982 elections, while Republicans used it to very narrowly elect Attorney General George Deukmejian as governor — even though pre-election polls indicated he would lose to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

Democrats continued to expand voter rolls and turnout with automatic voter registration through the Department of Motor Vehicles and allowing election-day registration. The 2016 Voter Choice Act made in-person voting more difficult by reducing voting sites while encouraging mail voting.

“Since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the state mails every voter a ballot by default. All the extra process for mailed ballots now applies to nearly twice the volume as in 2018,” Eric McGhee of the Public Policy Institute of California and Mindy Romero of USC’s Center for Inclusive Democracy pointed out in a recent guest commentary for CalMatters. 

“Signatures must be checked for each ballot to ensure the correct person submitted it. This is an election security measure meant to instill the confidence in elections that critics of the slow count say they want. 

“A true fix would focus more squarely on the counting process itself, seeking to tighten it up without disenfranchising voters.”

Ironically then, the state’s efforts to verify the legitimacy of ballots lengthen the count, which then leads to allegations that the count is being manipulated.