Here’s the Real Problem With California’s Elections

California elections aren’t being stolen, and there is no widespread cheating. What’s actually happening is that the state’s election rules and regulations are so poorly structured that what many spectators see as cheating is not only part of the system as it stands but entirely legal.

“They are stealing it without actually breaking the law”@LarryOConnor pic.twitter.com/BRGbNIvdTI

— Kevin McMahon (@Kevin__McMahon) June 9, 2026

“The real scandal coming out of California right now is quite possibly every single thing we are seeing transpire before our very eyes is 100 percent legal,” Townhall’s Larry O’Connor said.

“You can steal something and not break the law. And that’s what’s happening here.”

In California, voters can be registered without providing a Social Security number or driver’s license in some cases. Mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day can be counted if they arrive within the state’s deadline. All registered voters are automatically mailed ballots. Third-party groups are allowed to collect and submit completed ballots on a voter’s behalf. There have also been concerns about the accuracy of voter rolls, including reports of ballots being sent to deceased individuals or voters listed as over 100 years old due to outdated records.

“Anybody who is a registered voter gets a ballot mailed to them. And you register to vote because you know, walk into a DMV,” O’Connor said. “And you automatically get registered no matter what, you have any interaction with the DMV. And as you know, California leads the nation in giving driver’s licenses and registrations to illegal immigrants, people who are in the country illegally, and they’re getting commercial driver’s licenses in California right now. And when you go through the process, they register you to vote.”

And there is no check for citizenship, there is no check for ID, there’s no check for anything. And they’ll register you to vote and you’re on the voter rolls. And by their own admission, because they have said this in lawsuits and settlements with Judicial Watch, that they have not cleaned up their voter rolls, even though federal law says you must in years, in decades.

“Not only does every single person get a live legal ballot mailed to them, regardless of whether they should be getting one or not. But in California, individuals can go and collect ballots from anyone,” O’Connor said.

They can go and knock on the doors and say, hey, give me your ballot, I’ll take care of it for you, legally. And those people who knock on your door and collect your ballot, they call it ballot harvesting. They can work for political entities. They can work for political action committees, they can go and they can pick and choose what ballots they want to collect, and they bring them in or they don’t. And every mail-in ballot, there is no idea required for every single mail-in or dropbox ballot. All you’ve got to do is sign the ballot.

And questions go even further about the legitimacy of those signatures, and the lack of safeguards in place to verify that the signed ballots are actually authentic.

The problem in California is more fundamental than cheating. 

The structural procedures in place make questionable practices legal and even incentivize fraud, despite what California officials claim about the system being totally secure. The state not only ranks dead last in election integrity, but California officials, in an effort to stand up to Trump and because the system currently benefits their own party, are happy to let it remain as it is.

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