Trump, without proof, claims electoral fraud in California and orders an investigation

To everyone’s surprise, President Trump once again claimed without evidence that Democrats were somehow cheating to win California’s primary election – writing on social media Wednesday evening that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles were investigating the matter.

“The Dumocrats are at it again! They are trying to STEAL THE CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR AND LOS ANGELES MAYOR PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive number of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” Trump posted on his social media site.

“There is BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California. The votes are all blocked. Maybe not for weeks. Under investigation by the US Attorney’s office in Los Angeles,” he wrote in a second message. “Why the DELAY vote count??? »

A spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles – led by Trump loyalist First Assistant US Atty. Bill Essayli declined to comment Thursday morning on Trump’s claims about an investigation.

The White House declined to say what, if anything, Trump based his cheating allegations on or provide details of the investigation. Trump also provided no evidence when he doubled down on his claims during an Oval Office event Thursday, where he claimed California Democrats had “found a lot of mail-in ballots” the night before and were “rigging the election” with them.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber defended the state’s election process in a statement, saying “accuracy comes before speed” when counting millions of ballots in the nation’s most populous state.

“Taking the time to do this job properly protects voters’ rights and ensures the integrity of our elections,” Weber said. “California has built a strong system that expands access, empowers voters, and ensures more Californians can fully participate in our democracy.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office responded directly to Trump Wednesday evening with its own social media post, writing, “Trump is lying about California again — it’s time to take away Grandpa’s phone and put him to sleep.” »

On Thursday morning, Newsom’s office wrote that there was “a lot of misinformation circulating about California’s elections, including from the president,” and recommended people watch a CNN video about California’s election process. He concluded that delays in counting votes in the state are primarily because state leaders have decided that providing voters with “last-minute options” for voting is more important than a quick count.

“And yes, for the record: we want votes to be counted more quickly as well,” Newsom’s office wrote.

In an email, Brandon Richards, Newsom’s deputy director for rapid response, said Trump’s claims were part of a “tinfoil hat-level conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked.”

Trump’s latest remarks come as additional vote counting Wednesday narrowed Republican Steve Hilton’s advantage over his Democratic opponents in the California gubernatorial race and narrowed the gap in the Los Angeles mayoral race between MAGA-aligned candidate Spencer Pratt, currently second, and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, third.

Hilton maintained his slight lead on Thursday over Democrat Xavier Becerra, former California attorney general and Health and Human Services secretary in the Biden administration, while progressive billionaire Tom Steyer was in third place. In the mayoral race, Pratt remained in a battle with Raman for a second place finish and a chance to challenge Mayor Karen Bass in November.

Neither Hilton nor Pratt responded to a request for comment. In a recent interview on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” Hilton said the state’s slow vote count was “the reason so many people don’t believe the results” and was a product of California’s “corrupt Democratic machine” being in power for too long.

Even before voting day, election experts and Democratic leaders predicted that Trump would make allegations of cheating, which they dismissed as baseless bluster from a president plagued by low approval ratings.

These same experts and Democratic leaders acknowledge that California’s vote-counting system takes time and should be sped up, but emphasize that it’s not due to anything nefarious. Rather, it’s because California allows voters to vote by mail until Election Day — and then must count those ballots, which can number in the millions and are subject to manual signature verification.

Trump has long rejected such explanations. An election denier since entering politics more than a decade ago, he has repeatedly pushed skepticism about his and his party’s election losses — notably when he claimed, again without evidence, that the 2020 presidential race he lost to Joe Biden was stolen.

He has combined his tactic of targeting undocumented immigrants for political purposes with his skepticism about the integrity of elections by claiming, again without evidence, that these immigrants vote in large numbers, especially in big blue states like California, when experts say there is no evidence of this.

The president has alleged that mail-in ballots – such as those used by the majority of California voters – are a particularly rich source of voter fraud, although this claim again has no basis and is disputed by experts.

And he has attempted to use the power of his administration to make sweeping changes to election laws to ban mail-in voting and require strict voter identification and proof of citizenship measures, although control of elections and their rules are constitutionally vested in the states.

Those efforts have sparked a wave of litigation between the Trump administration and California and other blue states, with multiple cases pending in court regarding voter identification, proof of citizenship, mail-in voting and the role the U.S. Postal Service might be allowed to play in processing those ballots.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has spearheaded those legal battles for the state, on Thursday called Trump’s latest cheating allegations false and even more so from a president with a history of lying about elections — like when he falsely claimed last week that California had no voting booths, only mail-in ballots.

“Here’s the truth: In California, we believe every vote should be counted, and that’s what’s happening right now,” Bonta said.

It was also expected that Democratic candidates could gain over Republicans as mail-in ballots were counted later.

Election experts warned before the vote count began about the potential for a “red mirage,” in which early voting among Republicans and late voting among Democrats — many of whom were unsure who to vote for in the two high-profile races — would create an early illusion of Republican victories despite large numbers of liberal votes from major metro areas remaining to be counted.

This is a trend that has occurred repeatedly in previous elections and comes as no surprise to careful election observers.

Some local election officials have made a point of preparing their staff for baseless claims of voter fraud ahead of this year’s primaries. State officials have made repeated efforts to explain why California’s elections are taking so long, precisely to counter claims that the delays were the result of fraud.

Last month, Newsom sent a letter to local election officials in California saying they “must recognize that the longer the vote count takes, the more misinformation and disinformation spreads,” and noting steps Democrats have taken to speed things up — including passing laws last year allowing mail-in ballots to be processed before Election Day, shortening the time frame within which ballots must be counted after Election Day, and requiring updates. more regular day for the public.

“We are facing an attack on our democratic values ​​unlike any we have seen in our lifetimes, and it is our duty to safeguard those values ​​in these unprecedented times,” Newsom wrote.

The attacks on California’s electoral system came anyway, and not just from Trump.

Above a story published Wednesday suggesting Pratt was losing ground to Raman as new counts came in, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote: “California keeps throwing out votes. The odds change because the votes always seem to go one way. Count until you get the outcome you want?”

Above another »

Both messages DeSantis and Miller responded to came from Polymarket, a prediction marketplace where people can bet on the outcomes of political races, pop culture events and many other topics.

These emerging financial markets, which handle billions of dollars in bets, are raising growing concerns about political interference for profit — particularly from campaign staffers and others with inside knowledge of polls and other campaign information, or from politicians and their agents, whose public remarks on policy can tip these markets.

Registered voters in California — where the electorate is heavily Democratic — generally trust local election officials to run fair and secure elections, expressing confidence in them by a 2-to-1 margin overall in a recent poll conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies and co-sponsored by The Times. However, that changes dramatically along partisan lines — with 79% of Democratic voters, 62% of independents and just 42% of Republicans expressing confidence, according to the poll.

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who studies elections and was a senior policy adviser on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said Trump’s latest remarks were “disappointing” and wrong — but hardly surprising.

“The one constant is that he will claim the election is rigged, even though there is absolutely no evidence that that is the case,” Levitt said. “It degrades a process that deserves respect and admiration, and that deserves our trust.”

Times Staff Writer Ana Ceballos in Washington contributed to this report.

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