{"id":352691,"date":"2026-06-09T05:55:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T05:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/352691\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T05:55:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T05:55:29","slug":"many-californians-feared-federal-meddling-in-elections-before-trumps-latest-baseless-attacks-poll-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/352691\/","title":{"rendered":"Many Californians feared federal meddling in elections before Trump’s latest baseless attacks, poll finds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Even before President Trump\u2019s latest wave of unfounded claims of election fraud in California, a significant share of voters in the state expressed concerns about federal interference in the electoral process, according to a new poll.<\/p>\n

Trump on Monday claimed on his social media site that the race for Los Angeles mayor was a \u201cRigged Election,\u201d an allegation that came after Democrat Nithya Raman overtook Republican Spencer Pratt for second place in the ongoing primary election vote count. <\/p>\n

Raman\u2019s lead had prompted Rep. Abe Hamadeh, an Arizona Republican, to call for the election to be federalized, or run by the federal government rather than the state, a message Trump reposted. Raman on Monday clinched a spot on the November ballot<\/a>, the Associated Press declared.<\/p>\n

Earlier Sunday, Trump had alleged during an interview with NBC News that California elections officials \u201cwere cheating.\u201d That came after a debunked social media conspiracy theory <\/a>claiming that a lag in an update of electronic voting data by the Associated Press showed Pratt was being cheated. On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the elections process in the L.A. mayoral race \u201cstinks to high heaven.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n

The ongoing attacks by Trump and his supporters continue to erode confidence in the nation\u2019s elections, especially among Republicans, threatening a pillar of American democracy, said political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president … wants to use those claims to make changes in the election process that could make it harder for people to vote, and that certainly is a threat to our democratic institutions,\u201d Schickler said. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing we\u2019ve learned in recent years is that we just cannot take the voting process for granted, cannot take for granted that both sides will accept as legitimate the outcome, and can\u2019t take for granted the idea that there won\u2019t be efforts to essentially manipulate the vote counting process,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

A new poll released Friday by the institute<\/a> found that 41% of California voters were \u201cnot confident\u201d that this year\u2019s elections would be free of federal interference. Although 48% had confidence that there would be not meddling, the concerns expressed were still significant, Schickler said.<\/p>\n

More telling was the partisan divide among voters when asked whether they have confidence that local officials would conduct fair and secure elections and that the vote count would be accurate. Among Democratic registered voters, 79% said they trusted elections officials to provide an accurate vote count. Among Republicans, 55% said they were not confident that would occur. <\/p>\n

California voters who don\u2019t belong to either party said by a 2-1 margin that they had confidence in the vote count, the poll showed. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe positive is that local officials are still widely trusted by Democrats, no-party-preference voters, and at least a share of Republicans, though a lot fewer than I think in the past, and a lot fewer than you know we would want for a really healthy democracy,\u201d Schickler said. <\/p>\n

That growing mistrust among certain parts of the electorate comes after years of baseless claims by Trump that the 2020 election was stolen from him, as well as Republican-led efforts to restrict the use of mail-in ballots and impose new requirements for voters to show identification and proof of citizenship.<\/p>\n

Recent rulings by the conservative-leaning Supreme Court also have rolled back federal protections under the Voting Rights Act. In April, the court sharply limited a part of those protections that had forced states to draw voting districts to help elect Black or Latino representatives to Congress, as well as state and local boards. <\/p>\n

Trump and his allies have used California\u2019s slow vote-counting process<\/a> to allege cheating. The day after the June 2 primary, Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats were trying to \u201csteal\u201d the gubernatorial and L.A. mayoral primaries. The next day, he alleged that California Democrats had \u201cfound\u201d mail-in ballots and were \u201crigging the election\u201d with them.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Shirley Weber and other officials have said California\u2019s voting system prioritizes voter accessibility and security over speedy results. The state has more than 23 million registered voters, and ballots go through numerous verification steps, including verifying signatures on mail-in ballots. <\/p>\n

\u201cOver 97% of our folks actually vote by mail. They want to keep that system. That system demands more contact, more touching of the ballot, more verification of the individuals who are voting. All of those things take time,\u201d Weber said during a recent interview with ABC10 in Sacramento.<\/p>\n

Sen. Alex Padilla, who served as California\u2019s secretary of state before heading to Washington, said the state\u2019s elections are \u201csafe, secure and accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, we can and should invest to have ballots counted faster, but despite Trump crying foul when an election doesn\u2019t go his way, he has never offered any proof or evidence of the widespread fraud he claims,\u201d Padilla, a Democrat, said in a statement Monday.<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s office called Trump\u2019s claims during the recent \u201cMeet the Press\u201d interview the \u201cmost severe case of California Derangement Syndrome we\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d <\/p>\n

Newsom is considering a 2028 run for president and has consistently warned that Trump may try to interfere in both the 2026 and 2028 elections. <\/p>\n

The Berkeley poll found that California voters overall \u2014 74% \u2014 want candidates running for president in 2028 to prioritize defending democracy and making voting more accessible. Among Democratic voters, 95% said that was important; among Republicans, 41%. <\/p>\n

Funding for the poll was provided to IGS by the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, a private foundation based in San Francisco that aims to increase civic participation and improve the state\u2019s democratic processes.<\/p>\n

The poll of 8,578 registered California voters was conducted between May 19 and 25 online in English and Spanish and has a margin of error of about 2 percentage points in either direction.<\/p>\n

Times staff writers Alene Tchekmedyian and Kevin Rector contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Even before President Trump\u2019s latest wave of unfounded claims of election fraud in California, a significant share of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,97890,8863,6352,204,1520,18535,8111,3020,1748,144047,225,1519,1522,79622],"class_list":["post-352691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-certain-part","tag-claim","tag-confidence","tag-election","tag-interview","tag-mail-in-ballot","tag-poll","tag-president-trump","tag-republicans","tag-schickler","tag-state","tag-trump","tag-voter","tag-voting-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}