President Donald Trump has for years advised outlandish lies about elections in Democratic-dominated California. Trump made extra false claims on the topic in a Fox News interview on Friday, prompting California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, to accurately note on social media that the president had advised “an outright lie.”
Trump delivered the comments after a Fox host prodded him to disavow the thought of individuals on the political proper taking revenge, apart from by way of the peaceable technique of voting, for the homicide of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“He’d want revenge at the voter box,” Trump stated, “but unfortunately we don’t have so many ballot boxes because they have mail-in voting, which is totally rigged. You know, there are a lot of problems. I like ballot boxes, where you can – they do mail-in voting all over the place, which is rigged.”
Trump continued: “Any time – Jimmy Carter, they had a commission; he said, ‘Any time you have mail-in voting, it’s a crooked election,’ okay? ‘And they’ve gotta stop.’ But I say – so I can’t really say ‘at the ballot box,’ because in some cases – like California doesn’t have ballot boxes. They send out 38 million ballots, nobody knows where the hell they’re going, then they come back, Democrats get more than Republicans. It’s so unfair, the system.”
Here’s a truth examine of six of Trump’s assertions.
“…they have mail-in voting, which is totally rigged.” It merely isn’t. Mail-in voting is a respectable methodology utilized by respectable voters to forged respectable ballots. Elections specialists say the incidence of fraud tends to be marginally greater with mail-in ballots than with in-person ballots – but additionally that fraud charges in federal elections are tiny even with mail-in ballots.
Republican-dominated Utah is among the states the place voters are robotically despatched mail-in ballots (although it’s now phasing out that coverage); Utah’s federal elections, like California’s, have been freed from widespread fraud. And it’s value noting that Trump himself encouraged supporters to vote by mail in 2024.
“Jimmy Carter, they had a commission; he said, ‘Any time you have mail-in voting, it’s a crooked election.’” That’s not what Carter or the fee stated. Trump has repeatedly misstated the fee’s conclusions.
It’s true that the fee Carter co-chaired twenty years in the past was typically skeptical of voting by mail. Its 2005 report said that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud” and are “vulnerable to abuse in several ways.”
But the report didn’t say that “any time you have mail-in voting, it’s a crooked election.” In truth, the report highlighted an instance of profitable mail-only elections, saying that Oregon, a state that has been conducting elections solely by mail-in voting since the late 1990s, “appears to have avoided significant fraud in its vote-by-mail elections by introducing safeguards to protect ballot integrity, including signature verification.” The report additionally provided some suggestions for making the usage of mail-in ballots safer and referred to as for “further research on the pros and cons” of voting by mail.
Carter, who died in 2024, said in a 2020 assertion: “I approve the use of absentee ballots and have been using them for more than five years.”
“…California doesn’t have ballot boxes.” False. In-person voting is offered throughout California, although a mail-in poll can be sent to every active registered voter to make use of if they like.
Trump’s declare “is not accurate,” the workplace of California Secretary of State Shirley Weber advised NCS in an electronic mail on Friday. “In-person voting is a preserved option for all voters. Vote centers and ballot drop-off locations are available for those who prefer not to mail their ballots.”
About 3.1 million ballots have been forged at in-person voting areas in California within the 2024 basic election, representing about 19% of the entire ballots forged within the state in that election.
“They send out 38 million ballots.” False; that “38 million” determine just isn’t even near correct. California had about 22.6 million voters registered as of about two weeks prior to the November 2024 election and about 22.9 million voters registered as of early February 2025. There isn’t any foundation for any suggestion that some 15 million extra ballots have been distributed in any election. (California had more than 39 million complete residents in 2024, however that quantity contains kids, grownup residents not registered to vote, noncitizens, and individuals in jail.)
“Nobody knows where the hell they’re going.” They do. California’s county elections places of work ship a mail-in poll to the deal with on the voter’s registration file; an online system permits the voter to trace when the poll was despatched out by their elections workplace, acquired again by that elections workplace, and counted. There are occasional errors by counties and the postal service, however it’s definitely not the free-for-all of Trump’s portrayal – and there are safety measures in place to ensure that every poll is forged by the voter it was meant for and that every voter solely votes as soon as.
Weber’s workplace stated: “Elections officials use protocols to verify the eligibility and identity of the voter prior to sending the vote by mail ballot. When the ballot is returned, elections officials verify the voter’s identity through signature verification. If the elections official determines that the voter’s signature does not match, the identification envelope will not be opened, and the ballot will not be counted until the identification of the voter is confirmed.”
“Then they come back; Democrats get more than Republicans. It’s so unfair, the system.” It’s true that Democrats obtain extra mail-in votes than Republicans do in lots of California races, however that’s not an indication of corruption or unfairness. California, a liberal bastion the place no Republican presidential candidate has received since 1988, has millions more registered Democrats than registered Republicans – and Trump’s frequent depiction of mail-in voting as corrupt and insecure has led some of his supporters to avoid that method.