Instead, Dornan and his supporters settled on the craziest excuse of them all: Illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n
California voters were passing anti-immigrant laws by the boatful<\/a>, so Dornan\u2019s fevered tales about nonprofits registering noncitizens to vote and take him down landed with Republicans. A compliant Congress investigated Dornan\u2019s claims<\/a>, while local lawmakers proposed bills that would force voters to show government-issued identification every time they cast a ballot \u2014 a voter suppression tactic going back to the segregationist South.<\/p>\n The congressional investigation flopped like a soccer player fishing to draw a red card, finally concluding in 1998. Yes, noncitizens did vote for Sanchez, but only an infinitesimal number \u2014 less than 1% of the total votes tallied and not enough to overturn the results. No one was charged for illegally voting on purpose or improperly registering noncitizens to vote. <\/p>\n When Dornan ran again in 1998, with volunteers vowing to pursue any election irregularities, Sanchez walloped him, and he was swept into the dustbin of political history.<\/p>\n I teach this episode in my O.C. history college classes as a case study in what happens when political parties succumb to the spell of a vindictive demagogue who blames everyone for their failures except themselves. I also point out that Dornan had the last laugh: the idea that illegal immigrants regularly vote in elections, throwing them toward Democrats, has become gospel for many Republicans.<\/p>\n And here we are.<\/p>\n Republican U.S. Congressional candidate Bob Dornan speaks to a group of young adults at the Orange County Conservation Corps. in Anaheim, California in 1998. He was seeking to regain his old seat from Democratic incumbent Loretta Sanchez, who beat him in a historic 1996 upset.<\/p>\n (John Hayes\/Associated Press)<\/p>\n On Thursday, President Trump\u2019s obsession over losing to Joe Biden in 2020 reached a phlegmatic nadir with a speech<\/a> on debunked election fraud theories that weaved in everything from communist China to deposed Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro to \u2014 who else? \u2014 alleged noncitizen voters. <\/p>\n The tirade was so pathetic and noneventful that most networks didn\u2019t bother to air it. Even Fox News host Sean Hannity \u2014 whose tongue is probably two parts shoe polish after spending the last decade as Trump\u2019s personal spit shine \u2014 moved on just minutes after Trump finished.<\/p>\n The president insisted that the U.S. Senate pass a bill ahead of this November\u2019s midterms, mandating in the name of election integrity that voters show proof of citizenship<\/a> before casting a ballot.<\/p>\n In California, a clown car of MAGA loyalists \u2014 state Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, state Sen. Tony Strickland, wannabe Southern California U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli \u2014 are pushing something similar. Proposition 39<\/a> would require California election officials to verify the citizenship of registered voters and require voters to show government-issued identification when they cast a ballot.<\/p>\n By law, voters in federal elections must be U.S. citizens. Only a handful of municipalities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Despite Trump\u2019s trumpeting of supposed evidence that 278,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada, actual instances of them casting a ballot are as rare today as in Dornan\u2019s time. <\/p>\n That hasn\u2019t stopped Trump and his lackeys from claiming, as Dornan and his supporters did, that they are trying to restore faith in a system corrupted by liberals and their undocumented puppets. But, just like back then, this amounts to a dog whistle for people freaked out about changing demographics and massive GOP midterm losses. <\/p>\n It\u2019s the last, most dangerous gasp of a wheezing political movement whose supporters are clinging to power at all costs and just can\u2019t understand why more and more voters are tired of Trump\u2019s flailing foreign policy and failing economy.<\/p>\n These people are so delusional that they point to last month\u2019s California primaries as proof of election fraud, arguing that the results in two prominent races should have been different. <\/p>\n No Republican has won a statewide election in 20 years<\/a>, so it\u2019s not surprising that Republican Steve Hilton finished second to Democrat Xavier Becerra in the gubernatorial primary, with both advancing to the general election<\/a>. Nor was it a shock that in the primary for Los Angeles mayor, progressive incumbent Karen Bass and democratic socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman finished first and second over Republican reality television star Spencer Pratt<\/a>.<\/p>\n That didn\u2019t stop Trump from insisting that both Republicans should have won outright and crying conspiracy when they didn\u2019t. The president continued his laughable tune in his White House speech.<\/p>\n \u201cTook a month to count the votes,\u201d he whined about California\u2019s sloth-like approach to counting ballots. \u201cI wonder what they were doing. This is worse than any Third World country. There\u2019s no Third World country that has elections like we have.\u201d<\/p>\n Actually, many Third World countries elect despots like Trump \u2014 but that\u2019s neither here nor there.<\/p>\n A May poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that Proposition 39 was in a statistical dead heat, with 49% of voters favoring it and 51% opposed. All Prop. 39\u2019s opponents have to do is cite Trump\u2019s stark-raving mad comments about electoral fraud, and support for the ballot initiative will melt faster than the Sierra snowpack.<\/p>\n The Republican crusade against imaginary noncitizen voters may pay off in the short run but will inevitably, spectacularly backfire. <\/p>\n Look at what happened in my native Orange County. Sanchez\u2019s victory was the first ripple in a blue wave that eventually turned O.C. purple<\/a>. Our once-mighty GOP is now increasingly isolated to wealthier pockets of the county and no longer commands national attention \u2014 hell, they couldn\u2019t even deliver O.C. to Trump in any of his elections.<\/p>\n![\"Republican](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784374945_466_.jpeg\")
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