President Donald Trump has been lying for years about elections in California. He has achieved it again in the days previous to the state’s Tuesday primaries for governor and different workplaces.
In a Fox News interview that aired Saturday, Trump falsely claimed of California, “Their elections are a fraud; their mail-in votes are a fraud.” There’s merely no foundation for these obscure assertions. Then, later in the interview, Trump stated, “You know, they don’t have voting booths. Everything’s by mail.”
That’s not true, both — as NCS has pointed out when Trump has made such claims in the previous. Though all lively registered voters in California are despatched a mail-in poll, they’ve the choice to ignore that poll and vote in individual as a substitute.
“Any registered voter in California can decide whether to vote at a polling place or vote by mail,” the workplace of California’s elections chief says on its web site.
Individual California counties additionally clarify on their web sites that each one voters can forged ballots in individual. For instance, Santa Clara County says:
“Under the Voter’s Choice Act, each voter will robotically be despatched a Vote by Mail poll; nevertheless, you aren’t required to make use of it. Every voter additionally has the choice to go to a vote middle and vote in individual as a substitute.
When you vote in individual, your mail poll will robotically be void. You might both give up your unused poll at the vote middle or it’s possible you’ll destroy and dispose of it your self. Only one poll shall be accepted and counted per voter per election.”
About 3.1 million ballots have been forged at in-person voting places in California in the 2024 normal election, representing about 19% of the complete ballots forged in the state.
“President Trump, once again, is lying,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, wrote on X in response to Trump’s false declare on Fox. Bonta famous that Californians’ choices for casting a poll embody voting in-person at vote facilities — “Where, yes, there are voting booths. Lots of them.”
As he has on quite a few previous occasions, Trump stated in the Fox News interview, “No other country in the world is doing mail-in voting anymore because it’s a fraud.” Both components of that declare are mistaken.
In truth, dozens of countries — together with Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany and Switzerland — enable some or all voters to vote by mail, although the specifics of their insurance policies range. And there’s no foundation for categorically declaring mail-in voting “a fraud”; elections specialists say the incidence of fraud tends to be marginally larger with mail-in ballots than with in-person voting, but additionally that the proof reveals that fraud charges in federal elections are tiny even with mail-in ballots.
Trump instructed different lies about California elections in comments to reporters on May 20.
In maybe his wildest declaration on the topic, he stated, “If we had Jesus Christ come down and count the votes, I would have won California.” California’s votes are counted precisely, and it’s a Democratic-dominated state during which Trump has misplaced by huge margins in all three of his races — by 30 percentage points in 2016 (greater than 4 million votes), 29 points in 2020 (greater than 5 million votes), and 20 points in 2024 (greater than 3 million votes).
Immediately after that “Jesus Christ” declare, Trump stated of California, “They send out 38 million votes. Nobody knows where they’re going.” Both of these claims are incorrect. California had about 22.6 million voters registered as of about two weeks prior to the final presidential election and about 23.2 million voters registered as of May 18, 2026; there is no such thing as a foundation for any suggestion that some 15 million extra ballots have been distributed in any election, nor that elections workplaces don’t know the place they’re being despatched. You can learn extra particulars here.