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08-11-2025
WASHINGTON: As Californians voted on Tuesday for a new congressional map, United States President Donald Trump falsely said the process was rigged.
“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“All ‘Mail-In’ Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are ‘Shut Out,’ is under very serious legal and criminal review. STAY TUNED!”
A reporter asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for Trump’s evidence that the election was rigged.
“It is just a fact,” Leavitt said. “They have a universal mail-in voting system, which we know is ripe for fraud, … fraudulent ballots that are being mailed in, in the names of other people and the names of illegal aliens who shouldn’t be voting in American elections.”
Democratic state officials in California, including Governor Gavin Newsom and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, challenged Trump’s assertion. “Where exactly is this fraud? Ramblings don’t equate with fact,” Weber said.
When PolitiFact contacted the White House, a spokesperson responded with several points, many of which had also been shared in a post. These points criticized California’s 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.
Trump has repeatedly spread falsehoods about “rigged” elections, including in California. Rigging a state election would require election officials across the state to work together to commit felonies. There is no evidence that happened.
What did happen: The largely Democratic-voting state overwhelmingly approved a proposition to redistrict its congressional map to increase the chance of adding five Democratic seats to the US House of Representatives to negate a similar redistricting in Texas aimed at adding Republican seats.
White House evidence does not prove the election was rigged
Vote by mail system: Much of the White House’s evidence criticizes California’s system of mailing ballots to all active registered voters. It is one of eight states that conduct elections by such a system. Millions of ballots are sent to Californians and not returned, as the White House noted, but that doesn’t prove fraud. Election workers verify voter identities by matching signatures on the mail ballot envelopes with registration records.
Although voters are mailed ballots, they can choose to cast a ballot in person instead. Voters generally don’t have to provide an ID. Election workers can ask for an ID if the person is voting for the first time and didn’t provide an ID when registering to vote.
The White House cherry-picked one sentence from a 2005 bipartisan report that said; “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” Although the report generally communicated a dim view of absentee voting, it didn’t call for its elimination. It recommended ways to improve security and further study.
Noncitizen voters: The White House said, “San Francisco allows noncitizens to vote in local elections, which creates a high risk of fraud in federal elections,” and acknowledged noncitizens aren’t allowed to vote in federal elections. The city allows noncitizens to vote only in school board elections.
The US Department of Justice sued Orange County, California, in June after it redacted personal identifying information when it provided records to the department about 17 noncitizens on the voter rolls. (Int’l News Desk)
