{"id":502109,"date":"2026-10-20T10:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T10:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/502109\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T10:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T10:34:11","slug":"trumps-attack-on-california-voting-is-false-and-a-bit-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/502109\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s attack on California voting is false, and a bit funny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In what may be one of the most comical self-owns in recent politics, the esteemed attorneys of the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday that despite the extravagant and terrifying misuse of their investigative power under the Trump administration, they have so far been able to identify only 28 people in all of California<\/a> who may have voted illegally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe announcement today by the United States DOJ makes the point that there is no widespread voter fraud,\u201d California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said after the news conference announcing the results of \u201cOperation Protect the Vote.\u201d <\/p>\n

Twenty-eight people out of about 23 million registered voters in the state \u2014 and not all of them even tried to vote, according to the feds. That\u2019s about 1 in 820,000 folks allegedly registering or voting illegally, a rate that roughly matches how often people in the United States get struck by lightning<\/a> in a given year. <\/p>\n

So much for Trump\u2019s endless claims<\/a> that there is a vast, organized conspiracy between Democrats and undocumented people to have them vote in large numbers to steal elections<\/a>. I\u2019ll point out here that none of those charged Monday have been accused of colluding with one another or with Democratic overlords. <\/p>\n

All the power of the government \u2014 investigative, technological, legal \u2014 has been thrown at finding these mysterious, diabolically clever ballot baddies. And now, thanks to Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, and his colleagues across this great state, we now know that all 28 of them will be held accountable, if the government can prove wrongdoing. And let\u2019s be clear \u2014 people who vote illegally should be held accountable. <\/p>\n

But wait, there\u2019s more, because this election-stealing plot by immigrants certainly doesn\u2019t stop at the state line. Seamus Hughes of Court Watch<\/a>, an excellent site that tracks federal litigation, reported Monday that since the start of this administration, 169 people have been charged federally with illegally registering or voting. <\/p>\n

That number includes the new California cases, so it means an additional 141 potentially illegal voters have been charged across the U.S. \u2014 all told about 1 in 1.25 million registered voters being accused of illegally registering or voting, making this crime slightly less likely than guessing a six-digit pin code on the first try.<\/p>\n

There. Is. No. Election. Stealing. <\/p>\n

But that\u2019s where the funny part ends, because this attack on California elections is serious and just getting started.<\/p>\n

The federal government, you\u2019ve probably read, is suing California, claiming it gave the state a janky thumb drive with 20,000 names of registered voters that it sort of strongly suspects maybe aren\u2019t legal voters. Important note here: The government has been very careful not to claim that these people voted illegally, just that it might be so based on questionable data, which I\u2019ll get to in a minute. <\/p>\n

The feds gave the state a silly 48-hour deadline to agree to change constitutional law, dump common sense and sequester these 20,000 ballots, if they were even returned, to double-check they were cast by valid voters. <\/p>\n

When California rightfully refused \u2014 because elections are run by states, not the federal government<\/a> \u2014 the federal government sued on the thinnest of legal grounds. It basically claimed that voting illegally is illegal, and if California doesn\u2019t do exactly what Trump wants, it could be violating the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution by impeding the feds from enforcing the crime of voter fraud. <\/p>\n

\"Bill <\/p>\n

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli speaks at a news conference Monday at which officials announced that 28 people in California had been charged with voter fraud.<\/p>\n

(David Butow \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Which is basically arguing that if the state government fails to stop voter fraud using the flawed methods Trump likes, then the state is somehow stopping federal authorities from prosecuting voter fraud themselves. But didn\u2019t they just enforce it with 28 cases?<\/p>\n

Get ready, because \u201cstate-facilitated voter fraud,\u201d is a new right-wing thing. <\/p>\n

California is \u201cbeing complicit in non-citizens voting in our elections, and as they were warned last week, not only is it a civil violation, but they could also face criminal consequences,\u201d Essayli said, which if it happened would give Trumped-up charges a whole new meaning. <\/p>\n

Essayli said state officials are not being \u201cgood faith actors,\u201d but I\u2019ll argue that shoe is on the other foot. The list of 20,000 alleged, suspected, maybe-maybe-not illegal voters was likely drawn from the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, created by Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency, if you can remember that unfortunate relic. <\/p>\n

It sought to draw data from more than a dozen government databases that were not only not compatible with such information sharing, but which had been kept separate until now for privacy reasons. Americans in general did not want the government collecting unified, know-all records of every citizen. <\/p>\n

Luckily for us, I guess, the SAVE system can\u2019t actually create reliable, unified records. It confuses people, convolutes them, merges records of people with similar names, and in general has been deemed unreliable by data experts. <\/p>\n

In September, the good folks at the UCLA Voting Rights Project joined with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights to sue the federal government over its use of that system to target naturalized citizens for removal from voter rolls. Turns out, the government appears to be targeting immigrants who are now citizens with these voter fraud accusations. <\/p>\n

As I wrote about<\/a> a few weeks ago, naturalized citizens make up about 1 in 10 eligible voters<\/a>, and nearly a quarter of them live in California. But they also live in swing states such as Michigan, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed may draw such voters, and in other places such as Georgia and Nevada where races might be decided by only a few votes. <\/p>\n

These arrests and lawsuits while voting is already underway in the midterms are a not-subtle form of voter suppression. Imagine being a naturalized citizen in the Central Valley, where ICE is driving rampant fear and where Republican Rep. David Valadao is running against Democrat Randy Villegas in California\u2019s 22nd Congressional District \u2014 one of the nation\u2019s most closely contested races. <\/p>\n

Would you consider sitting this election out<\/a> just in case your ballot draws the frightening eye of the federal government? Even knowing that your vote is legal, what if you lived in a mixed-status household? Would it be worth risking voting if it meant a knock at the door from immigration checking on your status, and maybe finding that family member who lacks it? <\/p>\n

Why take the risk?<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, what they\u2019re doing now is just completely harassing and intimidating naturalized citizens who are legally eligible to vote through these actions,\u201d said Matt Barreto, co-founder of the Voting Rights Project. <\/p>\n

And if the vote isn\u2019t suppressed enough to give Trump the results he wants, these prosecutions and lawsuits feed the beast of conspiracy, giving Trump fodder to claim the results are fake, the election stolen. <\/p>\n

And round and round we go, reckoning with Trump\u2019s claims that lightning is striking everyone, everywhere, all at once, because the vote didn\u2019t go his way. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In what may be one of the most comical self-owns in recent politics, the esteemed attorneys of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5781,7,9,8,25659,1765,204,1135,405,1024,592,13824,225,1519,109495,4486,194426],"class_list":["post-502109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-bill-essayli","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-voting","tag-citizen","tag-election","tag-fed","tag-government","tag-monday","tag-people","tag-result","tag-state","tag-trump","tag-ucla-voting-rights-project","tag-vote","tag-widespread-voter-fraud"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502109","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=502109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}