After elections, there’s always a lot of conversation about election fraud. However, according to investigations, there isn’t a lot of evidence to back up this kind of voter illegitimacy.
Partisan lines in America are very clear and very divided. Now, how it seems is when the candidates you voted for the win, there is no election fraud. But if the candidates you voted for losing, it’s fraud.
In California, there have been attempts to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom’s win, with Republican activists saying that the election has been “sabotaged”.
According to Assemblyman Chad Mayes of Rancho Mirage, “When the recall fails it will not be because of ‘voter fraud’. The reason why Republicans fail over and over in this state is that they do not reflect the values of Californians. Until the @CAGOP comes to grip and changes, they’ll continue to lose.”
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Mirage was the house Republican leader until he was ousted by party colleagues for voting like a moderate. He subsequently left the GOP and became an independent candidate.
Many measures are taken to ensure the safety and sanctity of the vote. This includes a signature on the ballot which needs to match the voters’ registration files. Watermarks and bar codes unique to each election and specific voter are also put in the mail ballots.
Before any vote is counted, the state database is checked to make sure the person isn’t voting twice. Voters can also now sign up to track their ballot, and additionally, voter rolls are regularly purged of dead people.
But in Riverside County after the 2016 election, “watchdog vigilantes” claimed to identify more than 1,000 dead people on voter rolls, 7,500 who had registered more than once and 317 who cast more than one ballot.
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However, after a laborious investigation, authorities discovered that the voters who voted in the election were in fact, very much alive.
“There really hasn’t been any significant amount of voter fraud in California,” says Secretary of State Shirley Weber. “There are checks and balances and checks and balances. Folks in county elections offices take this very seriously.”
There has been one instance where a man in Riverside County was arrested for voting twice. He was sentenced to a day in jail and 250 hours of community service.
Would fraudulent voters really risk being put in jail and community service to aid in a politician’s win?
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According to a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, Democrats and Republicans are polarized even on the question of trust in the election process. When asked how much confidence they had in it, 58% of Democrats said a “great deal” but only 13% of Republicans did.
Among Republicans, 43% had “very little” confidence.