California’s Elections Compromised … by State Legislature

Dead voters are just the tip of the iceberg of California’s compromised elections process according to Linda Paine, founder of the Election Integrity Project, a non-profit, non-partisan corporation focused on assuring that every legally cast vote is properly counted and reported.

Fraudulent dead voters are concerning, but voter fraud is an even bigger problem in close races where election outcomes are decided by only a handful of votes, said Paine in an interview. Now, 16-year-olds can pre-register to vote in California. Free postage on mail ballots is coming next. California is moving to make the entire state all-vote-by-mail.

California has passed a spate of new election laws that some Democrats in Congress now want to adopt as a federal mandate nationwide, including “top two” primary elections, automatic voter registration through the DMV, allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections, allowing mail ballots to arrive after Election Day, rejecting voter ID, ballot harvesting, same-day registration and voting, allowing voters to “cure” their mail ballot signature mismatches via the honor system and, in 2020, providing all registrants with mail ballots.

Making matters even more concerning, Paine said the California Legislature has taken the in-depth reports provided by the Election Integrity Project documenting election weaknesses, and used the information to pass legislation enshrining ways to compromise elections. However, Paine said California Republicans ignored the warnings and patterns. “It’s like a Trojan Horse,” Paine said. “They are using it to put progressives in every office from dog catcher on up.”

Paine said California is no longer functioning like a Republic – “it’s more like an oligarchy at every jurisdiction and in every county.” However, Paine promised, “We are moving heaven and hell, with or without the California Legislature.”

Ballot Harvesting Perfected

Paine said in particular “ballot harvesting” derailed many California Republicans in the last election. And, not coincidentally, automatic DMV voter registration, known as the state’s New Motor Voter Program, was launched just before the June 2018 primary. It automatically mis-registered 23,000 people, including many illegal aliens.

Weeks after election night November 6, 2018, voters watched as double-digit leads in many key California House races disappeared as additional ballots were found and recorded – finalizing one month later. Paine said, based on EIPCa observers’ documentation, hundreds of thousands of the state’s mail voters never received their mail ballots, though the counties had announced successful mailings in early October. This was discovered when the mail ballot voter appeared in person at a polling location to cast their vote in person, because they had not received their mail ballot. Paine said most were told by poll workers that their ballot had already been received… filled out and recorded.

Linda Paine has long said that vote by mail is no longer reliable because the way it is now handled and managed – or mishandled and mismanaged – encourages and even facilitates criminal activity in voting.

“’You have a whole group of legislators that came out of voter organizing,’ said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, a San Diego Democrat who authored the prepaid postage bill and previously carried legislation to automatically register voters through the Department of Motor Vehicles,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “It’s changed everything.”

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher was bragging about how many now-elected California legislators were community organizers and “voter organizing.”

Problems in DMV Paradise With New Motor Voter Program

California Gov. Jerry Brown signed The California New Motor Voter Program into law in 2015, which automatically registers all “eligible” California voters to vote when they obtain or renew their driver’s licenses at the Department of Motor Vehicles, except they’ve not done well with it. In December, California Globe reported that a DMV spokesman admitted the agency had been warned by the federal government that it had violated the two forms of identification requirement to obtain the federally required Real ID. The California DMV issued 2.3 million Real Identification cards to residents who used just a single form of documentation. That means those who obtained the cards will be required to provide a second proof of their identity, but the DMV said not immediately, but only when their ID cards come up for renewal.

California has had more than 13 years to implement a Real ID, as most other states already accomplished. The California DMV asked for extension after extension — for 13 years. Then, they abruptly started issuing the Real ID in January 2018, ahead of the June 2018 Primary Election, even though DHS had not yet approved California’s version. So the  23,000 mis-registered people is really 2.3 million.

“People want to vote in person,” Linda Paine said. “They want their vote to matter.” Yet in the last election, California had five counties do an all-vote-by-mail process, in an attempt to move the entire state to mail ballots. “Republicans already got their butts kicked with ballot harvesting and vote by mail,” Paine said. “Vote by mail makes the voters invisible.” She said several elections officials have told her vote by mail is the easiest way to cheat.

Pain said House Democrats’ attempt is their first legislative act HR1, an attempt to nationalize California’s elections disasters. “While HR1 is not likely to pass the current Senate, parts of it might,” Paine’s EIP colleague Ellen Swensen wrote. “Also, beware: California Secretary of State Alex Padilla is the new chairman of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS). Over his four-year term, Padilla sees his work with DASS as an opportunity to encourage other states to pursue policies similar to California because ‘we think we have the right ideas.’”

“Citizens across the country need to actively monitor their state legislatures, be on the look-out for California-style election initiatives, and fight to defeat them,” Swensen said. “Don’t say we in California didn’t warn you.”