As Californians voted Nov. 4 for a new congressional map, President Donald Trump falsely said the process was rigged.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,\u201d Trump wrote Nov. 4 on\u00a0Truth Social<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAll \u2018Mail-In\u2019 Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are \u2018Shut Out,\u2019 is under very serious legal and criminal review. STAY TUNED!\u201d<\/p>\n A reporter\u00a0asked<\/a>\u00a0White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for Trump\u2019s evidence that the election was rigged.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is just a fact,\u201d Leavitt said. \u201cThey have a universal mail in voting system, which we know is ripe for fraud. \u2026Fraudulent ballots that are being mailed in, in the names of other people and the names of illegal aliens who shouldn\u2019t be voting in American elections.\u201d<\/p>\n Democratic California state officials, including\u00a0Gov. Gavin Newsom<\/a>\u00a0and Secretary of State Shirley Weber,\u00a0challenged<\/a>\u00a0Trump\u2019s assertion. \u201cWhere exactly is this fraud? Ramblings don\u2019t equate with fact,\u201d Weber said.<\/p>\n When PolitiFact contacted the White House, a spokesperson responded with several points, many of which had also been shared in an\u00a0X post<\/a>. These points criticized California\u2019s voting system, but included only one case of a person charged with voter fraud. The White House also misrepresented the numbers on voter registration and voter removal to support its claims.<\/p>\n Trump has repeatedly\u00a0spread falsehoods<\/a>\u00a0about\u00a0\u201crigged\u201d elections<\/a>, including in\u00a0California<\/a>. Rigging a state election would require election officials across the state to work together to commit felonies. There is no evidence that happened.<\/p>\n What did happen: The blue state\u00a0overwhelmingly voted<\/a>\u00a0to redistrict the congressional map to increase the chance of adding five Democratic seats to negate added likely Republican seats in Texas.<\/p>\n White House evidence does not prove the election was rigged <\/p>\n Vote by mail system:\u00a0Much of the White House\u2019s evidence criticizes California\u2019s system of mailing ballots to all active registered voters. It is one of\u00a0eight states<\/a>\u00a0that conduct elections by such a system. Millions of ballots are sent to Californians and not returned, as the White House noted, but that doesn\u2019t prove fraud. Election workers\u00a0verify<\/a>\u00a0identity by matching signatures on the mail ballot envelopes with the registration records.<\/p>\n Although voters are mailed ballots, they can choose to cast a ballot in person instead. Voters generally don\u2019t have to provide an ID. Election workers can ask for an ID if the person is voting for the first time and didn\u2019t provide an ID when registering to vote.<\/p>\n The White House cherry picked one sentence from a\u00a02005 bipartisan report<\/a>\u00a0that said, \u201cAbsentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.\u201d Although the report generally communicated a dim view of absentee voting, it didn\u2019t call for its elimination. It recommended ways to improve security and further study.<\/p>\n Noncitizen voters:\u00a0The White House said, \u201cSan Francisco\u00a0allows<\/a>\u00a0non-citizens to vote in local elections which creates a high risk of fraud in federal elections,\u201d and acknowledged noncitizens aren\u2019t allowed to vote in federal elections. The city allows noncitizens to vote only in\u00a0school board elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Justice Department\u00a0sued Orange County<\/a>\u00a0in June after it redacted personal identifying information when it provided records to the department about 17 noncitizens on the voter rolls.<\/p>\n Bob Page, the county registrar of voters, said the 17 people self-reported that they wanted to cancel their voter registrations, including eight who voted before they cancelled their voter registration.<\/p>\n Duplicate registrations:\u00a0\u201cCalifornia reported 2,178,551 duplicate registrations in the 2024 election cycle \u2014 15.6% of total registered voters,\u201d the White House said.<\/p>\n The statement misleadingly gives the impression that those people appear on the voter rolls more than once. \u201cDuplicate registrations\u201d refer to the number of registration applications that California election officials received but didn\u2019t process because they were identical to existing registrations. Duplicate registration can happen by accident; some people register and forget they did so, or submit registration both through the mail and online.<\/p>\n The number the White House cited represents the number of times California election officials caught the mistake, not made one.<\/p>\n The number comes from a 2024\u00a0national survey<\/a>\u00a0on voting activity and election administration between 2022 and 2024 by the\u00a0bipartisan<\/a>\u00a0U.S. Election Assistance Commission.<\/p>\n The national average for duplicate applications is 12.7%.<\/p>\n Removing voters after death:\u00a0The White House said, \u201cCalifornia only removed 378,349 registered voters for death (11.9%), which was well below the national average,\u201d between the 2022 and 2024 elections.<\/p>\n This figure is cherry picked. The White House cited voters removed because of death, which is just one reason for striking a voter from the rolls.<\/p>\n From 2022 to 2024, California removed more than 3.177 million voters from its rolls for all reasons, including death, according to the same election survey. That\u2019s a 12.4% removal rate of all registered voters, compared with the national average of 9.1%.<\/p>\n California removed a larger proportion of voters for reasons other than death, such as moving or failure to return a confirmation notice.<\/p>\n Voter fraud:\u00a0The White House pointed to one woman charged with voter fraud.<\/p>\n In September, authorities charged a\u00a0woman from Costa Mesa, California<\/a>, with five felonies for illegally registering her dog to vote. The dog\u2019s vote was counted in the 2021 gubernatorial recall election, but rejected in the 2022 primary. The Orange County District Attorney\u2019s office\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0the woman \u201cself-reported that she had registered her dog to vote.\u201d<\/p>\n Laura Lee Yourex, 62,\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0she wanted to prove a point about flaws in the state voting system, according to her lawyer.<\/p>\n The conservative Heritage Foundation\u2019s voter fraud database shows\u00a069 cases<\/a>\u00a0in California between 1982 and 2025. The database shows dozens of cases in red states such as\u00a0Florida<\/a>, which does not send a mail ballot to all voters.<\/p>\n Our ruling <\/p>\n Trump said voting in California is \u201crigged.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House\u2019s explanation misrepresented data about duplicate registrations, cherry-picked data about dead voter removals from registration rolls, pointed to one woman charged with voter fraud among about 23 million registered voters, and baselessly blamed San Francisco\u2019s allowance for noncitizen voting in school board elections.<\/p>\n The White House did not prove California voting is \u201crigged.\u201d We rate Trump\u2019s statement Pants on Fire!<\/p>\n PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact check.<\/p>\n This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact<\/a>, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Californians voted Nov. 4 for a new congressional map, President Donald Trump falsely said the process was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,28492,17943,457,28493,8357,28494,2803,991,26296,6095,2805],"class_list":["post-42444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-election-fraud","tag-election-integrity","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-mail-in-voting","tag-misinformation","tag-politifact","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-redistricting","tag-voter-fraud","tag-voting-rights","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42444","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=42444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}