California: Exhibit A in the Case for Election Security

We have just witnessed a recurring nightmare for Republicans in California. And while it is hardly of the same magnitude as the 2020 presidential election, it involves the nation’s second-largest city and should thus be of substantial concern to the millions of Americans worried about election security. The problem reared its head during the onset of COVID-19 and has hung on like the stubborn virus that created the trouble in the first place.  

Spencer Pratt’s Vanishing Lead 

With over 60% of the votes counted by the morning after last week’s LA mayoral primary, upstart Spencer Pratt, off a brilliant populist campaign, held an eight-point lead for second place over last-minute socialist entry Nithya Raman. By the next afternoon, Pratt’s lead over Raman had shrunk to six points, then three points the next day, and one point a day later. By the Sunday after the election, Raman had moved ahead of Pratt and is now projected to face incumbent Karen Bass in the general election in November. Pratt supporters suffered through the same sinking feeling experienced by Trump voters on Election Night 2020, when a sizable Trump lead started evaporating by the hour with the near certainty he would not recover. 

Vote counting in the gubernatorial and LA mayoral races continues ten days after ballots were cast with no end in sight, which by itself will always generate suspicion. But beyond that, like in the 2020 presidential election, any examination of California’s progressive election laws makes one realize the die was long since cast against upstart Spencer Pratt, and that, for all the positive press he received in recent weeks, he never really had a chance. The Democrats’ statewide and citywide hegemony is complete and absolute, and it’s exemplified in transparently one-sided voting laws.

The Origins of Unsecure Elections

Following the explosively controversial, pandemic-plagued presidential election six years ago, a majority of Republicans came to believe the outcome was corrupt and illegitimate, as popularized by the slogan “Stop the Steal.” When asked by various individuals whether the accusations of widespread voter fraud were on target, my response has been to argue that they did not need to “steal” the election by stuffing ballot boxes. Why? 

Well, because the pandemic had already provided perfect cover for liberalizing long-standing voting laws on the fly and flooding the zone with tens of millions of unsolicited mail-in ballots and ubiquitous unsecured drop boxes. All of this, together with a COVID death toll in the hundreds of thousands and Trump’s plea to his voters to reject voting by mail, had all but assured a Democratic victory by the time Election Day rolled around. As some have put it about former President Joe Biden and the Democrats, they stole the election fair and square. 

Fast forward six years, and the Golden State legislature has made permanent all of the controversial laws rushed into place in 2020, and then some. Voters are lavished with privileges unheard of less than a decade ago: universal mail-in ballots, same-day voter registration, automatic motor-voter registration, provisional ballots, a seven-day post-election grace period for mailed ballots to be counted, and the granddaddy of them all, ballot harvesting. Voter rolls and county elections offices are under oversight by Democrat politicians and bureaucrats. All of this leaves little room for optimism on the right about the chances of Republican Steve Hilton in his so-far impressive bid to become governor of California. Spencer Pratt learned it the hard way, and Hilton seems likely, perhaps certain, to follow.   

While the broad-ranging SAVE Act, designed to protect election integrity, appears to have met an untimely death in Congress, those who opposed it would do well to carefully examine how elections are conducted in California. In fact, if President Trump and his allies in Congress intend to signal afresh the urgency for the reforms included in the SAVE Act, all they need to do is point to the Golden State. As a petri dish for every type of corruptible election statute, California should serve as a fair warning to states considering similar laws, which, in the end, can only lower the people’s already shaky confidence in the most foundational element of democracy.