\n Just two hours later, though, Gasparino himself was entertaining the idea that an election is being stolen. After former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger noted that President Donald Trump is claiming last week\u2019s election in California is \u201crigged,\u201d Gasparino responded: \u201cMaybe it is<\/a>.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n There is zero evidence that there is anything fraudulent about the election results in California. As CNN\u2019s Elex Michaelson has explained<\/a>, the state\u2019s ballot-counting process takes a long time because of how its elections are run, and late-counted mail ballots have typically favored Democrats in large part because Trump has turned Republicans against voting by mail.\n <\/p>\n \n But through a combination of disinterest with those details, internet silos and raw politics, theories that Democrats are stealing the California governor\u2019s race and the Los Angeles mayoral race have caught on like wildfire on social media. It has even extended to Republicans who previously kept such voter-fraud claims at arm\u2019s length.\n <\/p>\n \n After five years of voter fraud fever on the right going somewhat dormant, it\u2019s back with a vengeance \u2014 ignoring the fact that this exact rhetoric led to ugly and violent places at the seat of the US government on January 6, 2021.\n <\/p>\n \n Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last epitomized this trend.\n <\/p>\n \n DeSantis was never a leading election denier in the aftermath of 2020. And when he was challenging Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries, he dismissed Trump\u2019s claims<\/a> of a stolen election, saying, \u201cAll those theories that were put out did not prove to be true.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But on Wednesday, DeSantis decried how new batches of votes in California \u201calways seem to go one way.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cCount until you get the result you want?<\/a>\u201d DeSantis added, conspiratorially.\n <\/p>\n \n A major problem with Trump\u2019s voter fraud crusade after the 2020 election was that he struggled to get his own Justice Department to take his claims seriously. Both his current and former attorney general resisted, and Trump infamously tried to elevate someone to that post who would entertain his wild claims, Jeffrey Clark.\n <\/p>\n \n But today, his DOJ is playing into the idea that something is amiss.\n <\/p>\n \n The US attorney\u2019s office in Los Angeles over the weekend announced\u202f\u201cmultiple election fraud investigations,\u201d while citing supposed \u201cserious structural vulnerabilities.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n And on Monday, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, was on CNBC feeding into such suspicions. While qualifying that he wasn\u2019t claiming there was fraud, he said California had created \u201cthe opportunity for fraud<\/a>.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Even just saying that goes afield of how prosecutors, who generally strictly deal in evidence and not theories, are supposed to conduct themselves.\n <\/p>\n \n Clayton was also asked twice about false viral claims<\/a> that large numbers of votes had been added to the totals in the Los Angeles mayoral race without any of them going to Republican candidate Spencer Pratt. Neither time did Clayton push back on that assertion \u2014 even though the US Attorney\u2019s office in Los Angeles had already debunked those claims<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n House Speaker Mike Johnson went so far as to suggest that obtaining evidence to support fraud claims would be impossible, as he asserted the situation in California \u201cstinks to high heaven.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cSome of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it is impossible to prove,\u201d he said. \u201cBut think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Social media is also rife with people suggesting it\u2019s unthinkable that Democrats were gaining so much after primary day \u2014 despite that being a common occurrence in deep-blue California. Trump himself leaned into that narrative on Monday, saying it was \u201cnot possible\u201d for Pratt to have fallen behind \u201cafter the big lead he had.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cRigged Elections!\u201d Trump said on Truth Social.\n <\/p>\n \n (In fact, that\u2019s how things almost always go in the Golden State; it just so happens that the candidacies of Pratt and former Fox News host Steve Hilton for governor made more people on the right pay increased attention to California, which is often an electoral afterthought nationally.)\n <\/p>\n \n While responding to a clip of Trump saying California\u2019s election was rigged, conservative TV personality Meghan McCain said<\/a>, \u201cFor whatever it\u2019s worth, people in my life who have never ever spoken about stolen elections in any capacity are now saying this about California.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n That tracks more widely, too. And disturbingly, it\u2019s happening after years of election suspicion trending down.\n <\/p>\n \n Even though Republicans under-performed in the 2022 midterm elections, it was mostly the likes of Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake complaining about fraud, while the rest of the party ignored her.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s win in 2024 gave the GOP little reason to complain about supposed fraud. And the 2025 results were so decisive for Democrats \u2014 and in just a few states \u2014 that it wasn\u2019t conducive to such complaints.\n <\/p>\n \n Polling shows a decline in concerns about fraud. Washington Post-University of Maryland polling showed about 3 in 10 Americans and 6 in 10 Republicans thought there was \u201csolid evidence\u201d of fraud in the 2020 election, in surveys conducted in 2021 and 2023. But those numbers dropped to 16% and 21%<\/a>, respectively, after the 2024 election.\n <\/p>\n \n That being said, this is clearly still a tinderbox.\n <\/p>\n \n After months of Republicans baselessly claiming voting by undocumented immigrants is a major problem and pushing for legislation to prevent it, a March Marist College poll<\/a> showed confidence in the fairness of the upcoming election was lower than it\u2019s been at any point in recent years \u2014 including ahead of the 2020 election.\n <\/p>\n \n The survey also showed 70% of Republicans expected fraud to mar the upcoming election.\n <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/gettyimages-2278791173.jpg\")
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