“As states across our country continue to enact undemocratic voter suppression laws, California is increasing voter access, expanding voting options and bolstering elections integrity and transparency.”
While Newsom and other supporters claim vote-by-mail ballots strengthen election integrity, critics disagree.
The nonprofit group has long opposed wholesale vote-by-mail elections, ballot harvesting, and other recent changes to election laws that it claims open the door to the potential for increased irregularities and voter fraud.
- Defective codes on vote-by-mail ballots caused rejection by the tabulator. All of those ballots had to be duplicated.
- Voters were forced to vote provisionally or not at all because a vote had already been recorded in their name.
- Voters with a long history of voting in every election were suddenly removed from the voter rolls between November 2020 and this election.
- Voters in multiple counties left the polls with their live ballot in their hands, believing or being told that it was their “receipt,” not a ballot that needed to be submitted to the ballot box.
- Poll workers met with unanswered hotlines on Election Day and therefore were unable to resolve serious issues.
- Voters received multiple vote-by-mail ballots, ballots of strangers, ballots of previous homeowners, and ballots of adult children who had moved to other states many years ago.
- Former Californians received recall ballots in their new state, even though they had canceled their California registration and re-registered in their new state. Many of these people had been out of state for decades.
- Individuals who never registered to vote received ballots in the mail.
- Voters were forced to mark their ballots with Sharpies, which bled through and likely required ballots to be duplicated.
High Voter Turnout Claims
The practice of sending vote-by-mail ballots to every registered voter first began in California in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and was extended through 2021.“When voters get a ballot in the mail, they vote,” Assemblyman Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) said in the release. “We saw this in the 2020 General Election when, in the middle of a global health pandemic, we had the highest voter turnout in California since Harry Truman was president.”
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber applauded the legislation.
“The bill will permanently expand access and increase participation in our elections by making voting more convenient and meeting people where they are,” she said in the statement.
“Vote-by-mail has significantly increased participation of eligible voters. Voters like having options for returning their ballot whether by mail, at a secure drop box, a voting center or at a traditional polling station. And the more people who participate in elections, the stronger our democracy and the more we have assurance that elections reflect the will of the people of California.”
Weiss criticized claims that vote-by-mail directly correlates to high voter turnout.
“There is no way to prove that,” she said. “It’s like comparing apples and oranges. In 2020, they have no idea what the participation would have been without forcing a vote-by mail ballot down everybody’s throats, because it was a very energetic and contentious election that was bound to have a high turnout anyway.”
Mail-in ballots were sent out to all registered voters in the gubernatorial recall election, and yet the turnout “was nothing to write home about,” she said.
Recent changes to elections laws and the voting process in California have also confused and frustrated voters, especially those who chose to vote in-person.
“It’s very chaotic,” Weiss said.
In the 2020 election, EIPCa’s research determined that more than 440,000 ballots were mailed out to voters who had either died or moved out California, but the state has done little to clean up the state’s voter rolls, Weiss said.
“They completely denied the enormity of the numbers that we were able to provide” she said.
EIPCa, a non-partisan group, has been investigating election integrity in the state for the last 11 years.
