For most people, the recent Los Angeles election probably seems like a running joke. More than two weeks have passed since the June 2 election, yet bureaucrats are still counting votes. But this farce is no laughing matter. Democrats want to nationalize California’s foolish voting laws, bringing seemingly endless confusion, and a much higher chance of fraud, to every federal election.
That’s the frightening reality of Democrats’ top legislative priority during the Biden years. The so-called “For the People Act” was filled with election ideas that have sown chaos in California for years. Democrats are sure to bring back this bill the next time they control the federal levers of power, perhaps passing it through Congress as early as next year. Apparently, they see nothing wrong with California’s inability to count votes or credibly prevent election fraud. Just the opposite: They know that California’s broken system makes it harder for Republicans to win, as LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt has learned firsthand.
The parallels between California laws and congressional Democrats’ demands are nearly too numerous to count. The single biggest reason the Los Angeles vote-counting has taken so long is that in California, mail-in ballots can be received up to seven days after an election. That obviously makes it impossible to have accurate vote totals on election night. Yet congressional Democrats think that’s good, and in the For The People Act, they actually let mail-in ballots arrive up to 10 days later.
Counting late-arriving ballots doesn’t just delay election results — it also encourages election fraud. California says ballots have to be postmarked by Election Day, but if the postmark is missing, a voter can simply date the ballot. In other words, unscrupulous actors can fill out multiple ballots and falsely date them after Election Day. Congressional Democrats at least kept the postmark requirement, but that still leaves the door open to more fraud.
The delay, and chance of despicable vote-stealing, is even worse because California sends a mail-in ballot to every voter. Often, it sends ballots that should never be sent because the Golden State has made it dramatically harder to keep voter rolls clean, so ballots may still be mailed to voters who are dead, are duplicates, or have moved. Democrats’ federal bill does the exact same thing, even though election integrity is obviously at stake. Combined with the bill’s universal mail-in ballot provision, the possibility of fraud is simply breathtaking.
The same goes for California’s decision to let so-called “ballot harvesters” collect and turn in a limitless number of other people’s mail-in ballots. Ballots are counted even if they don’t track whose ballots the harvester picked up, whether the harvester helped voters fill them out, or anything else that establishes a chain of custody. The invitation to fraud is obvious because a harvester can also look up a person’s voter registration to identify their party. Congressional Democrats tried to pass a similar policy, explicitly banning requirements that ballot harvesters use witnesses or have ballots notarized by third parties. Why block the easiest way to prevent fraud, unless fraud is what you want?
The same conclusion is hard to avoid with Democrats’ refusal to force voters to prove they are who they say they are. The For The People Act nationalizes the California policy of banning any form of voter identification on mail-in ballots. All a voter has to do is sign the right name, which state officials are required to presume is valid. So much for the age-old adage of trust but verify, which is especially important when the voters’ will is at stake.
THE FALLOUT IN LA FROM SPENCER PRATT’S FALL
This is only a partial list of the foolish California voting policies that congressional Democrats want to mandate nationwide. These policies have directly contributed to the absurdly long vote-counting that’s still happening in Los Angeles, as well as the widespread worries that voter fraud occurred. While Democrats and their media allies decry such “conspiracy theories,” they’ve undeniably built a system that makes fraud incredibly easy — and incredibly hard to detect. With ballot harvesting, for instance, there’s no way for voters to know if a harvester ever turned in their ballot. The harvester would have to turn themselves in, and what criminal is going to do that?
Thankfully, Democrats lacked the votes to pass the For The People Act during Joe Biden’s presidency. But you can bet they’ll try again the next time they control both chambers of Congress and the White House. They want the election chaos because it helps them win, fairly or not. Right now, people are laughing at the vote-counting insanity that’s still happening in Los Angeles. But if Democrats get their way in Washington, everyone will soon be crying.
Madeline Malisa is the policy director at the Foundation for Government Accountability.