White House briefing<\/a> Tuesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed, without providing examples, that California was receiving ballots in the name of undocumented immigrants who could not legally vote.<\/p>\nCalifornia\u2019s top elections official, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, called Trump\u2019s allegation \u201canother baseless claim.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bottom line is California elections have been validated by the courts,\u201d Weber said in a statement. \u201cCalifornia voters will not be deceived by someone who consistently makes desperate, unsubstantiated attempts to dissuade Americans from participating in our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 6.3 million Californians \u2014 28% of the state\u2019s 23 million registered voters \u2014 had cast ballots as of Monday, according to a voting tracker run by Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell. Ballots submitted by Democrats were outpacing votes by Republicans on Monday, though GOP voters were believed to be more likely to vote in person on election day.<\/p>\n
Disabled Army veteran Micah Corpe, 50, had some choice words for Newsom outside a Twentynine Palms church that served as a polling place, calling the politician a \u201cgreasy used car salesman.\u201d <\/p>\n
Corpe, a Republican, described Proposition 50 as an effort by the governor to \u201cdo whatever he wants because he doesn\u2019t like Trump.\u201d At the same time, he said Texas\u2019 decision to redraw its congressional districts was a necessity because of the influx of people moving there from California and other blue states. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe fights [Trump] on everything,\u201d Corpe said of Newsom. \u201cJust give in a little to get a little. That\u2019s all he\u2019s got to do.\u201d <\/p>\n
Matt Lesenyie, an assistant professor of political science at Cal State Long Beach, said the seeds of Proposition 50 were sowed when it became clear that Republicans in Congress were not going to challenge Trump in an investigatory way or provide serious oversight.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the benefits of our system is that there are checks designed in there and we haven\u2019t exercised those checks in a good long time, so I think this is a Hail Mary for potentially doing that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bob Rowell, 72, said that in an ideal world Proposition 50 wouldn\u2019t be necessary. But the Trump administration\u2019s push to redraw lines in red states has created a \u201cdistinct danger of creating a never-ending Republican domination in Congress,\u201d he said. So Rowell, a Green Party member, voted yes. <\/p>\n
\u201cI hope there\u2019s some way to bring us back into balance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Robert Hamilton, 35, an architectural drafter who lives in Twentynine Palms, sees Proposition 50 as a necessary step to push back on Trump\u2019s policies, which he said are impinging on people\u2019s rights. He\u2019s proud of the role California is playing in this political moment. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think as a state we\u2019re doing an excellent job of trying to push back against some of the more egregious oversteps of our liberties,\u201d Hamilton said outside a church where he\u2019d just cast his ballot in favor of the measure. \u201cI do hope that if this measure is successful that other states will follow suit \u2014 not necessarily taking the same steps to redistrict but finding ways to at least hold the line while hopefully we get things sorted out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Katie King contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California voters went to the polls Tuesday to decide on a radical redistricting plan with national implications, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7167,26523,7,9,8,4970,1751,457,26524,26522,592,3020,4489,1748,225,1519,1710],"class_list":["post-38459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-ballot","tag-bottom-line","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-voter","tag-democrats","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-investigatory-way","tag-other-gop-majority-state","tag-people","tag-president-trump","tag-proposition","tag-republicans","tag-state","tag-trump","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38459","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=38459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}