California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber urged voters to vote early in the Nov. 3 general election, confirming that the state’s mail-in ballot system remains unchanged despite federal challenges and rejecting claims of widespread election fraud.
With ballots already being distributed by mail to every registered voter, Californians have multiple ways to vote: in-person at a polling site, using official drop boxes or by mail.
Voting rules preserved
Existing mail voting systems were secured nationwide this November by a Sept. 14 Supreme Court order blocking a new U.S. Postal Service rule for federal ballot mail through the midterms.
The rule — which USPS issued last August to implement part of President Donald Trump’s March executive order on “election integrity” — would have required every state and local jurisdiction to use USPS-approved ballot envelopes; upload the name, address and barcode of each mail voter to a new federal portal; and match that data exactly on each envelope. Ballots failing any of those checks would not have been delivered.
“That was knocked down by the courts because it said it was too late,” said Weber at an Oct. 8 American Community Media briefing. “It would have been chaotic.”
Last January, she also secured a win for California in United States of America v. Weber, wherein the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state to obtain full access to its entire voter registration database, including California voters’ Social Security and driver’s license numbers, partisan affiliation, home addresses and voting history.
“We refused, we went to court and won the case,” said Weber.
While Oct. 19 is the voter registration deadline, Californians who are adult U.S. citizens can still register and vote at their county elections office or a polling site through Election Day; those provisional ballots are counted once verified by election officials.
Eligible 16- and 17-year-old Californians can also apply to become automatically registered to vote as soon as they turn 18.
“Tell them they are not too late,” Weber said of unregistered Californians who believe they have missed their window. “They can still register the day of the election on Nov. 3.”
Adult U.S. citizen residents also remain eligible to vote after serving a felony sentence, she affirmed: “You don’t have to wait for the governor to approve you. You don’t have to appeal it to anyone. Once you have served your time, you are eligible to vote in California.”
“The things that we did in June are the things that we’re doing now,” Weber added. “Those rules still apply, so you don’t have to do anything different than what you’ve done then, other than vote.”
Fighting misinformation and intimidation
During the vote count after last June’s primary, Trump baselessly attributed California’s ongoing count to “rigging the election.” Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles then announced that they were pursuing “multiple election fraud investigations,” not identifying specific targets or misconduct. The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office said it received no complaints from the federal government.
Extensive research, however, reveals that voting fraud is extremely rare.
Of the more than 25 million votes cast in six battleground states disputed by Trump during the 2020 election, an Associated Press analysis found fewer than 475 unconfirmed/potential fraud cases, with no sign of a coordinated effort.
Research by the Brennan Center for Justice finds that most reported instances of fraud owe to clerical errors or faulty data matching, with incident rates in elections closely studied for fraud ranging between 0.0003% to 0.0025%.
“The president is misinforming the public,” said Weber. “For the last six years, after the ‘declaration’ that there were fraudulent things occurring, there has been no data, no evidence that that has occurred anywhere in California or the United States.”
When misinformation arises, such as rumors that Election Day is Nov. 4, her office publishes corrections on its website. Voters who cannot find answers online can contact her office for help.
ICE at polling stations
Addressing rumors of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at polling sites, Weber encouraged voters who fear being questioned or intimidated to use official drop boxes instead — adding that election officials heard similar rumors during the last primary, yet saw no such presence.
Once votes are cast in a drop box, “they’re locked down and secure. You can’t get it back out, and it’s a way that you can vote with comfort,” said Weber. “It’s not likely that you’re going to find ICE at a place like that, that you can pop in and out. Those are the most secure voting systems we have.”
This year, the state tightened rules restricting law enforcement activity near polling locations: SB 73, signed in May, bars military personnel at voting locations, bans peace officers from interfering with elections except in urgent emergencies and makes seizing ballots a felony. SB 884, signed in September, bars arrests within 200 feet of a polling site on Election Day, except for disrupting the site or for crimes against people or property.
Meanwhile, voter intimidation remains a felony under the California Elections Code. Additionally, the code bars armed or uniformed officers and security guards from being stationed within 100 feet of a polling site without written authorization from local elections officials, unless they’re responding to a specific incident or voting.
Voter intimidation
“Intimidation is an offense. It’s a crime,” Weber said. “If we ever get to the point where we allow poll workers to be intimidated, then we have lost our system.”
County registrars are trained on how to work with law enforcement and respond to incidents, she added, urging voters who witness intimidation or otherwise need help navigating voting to notify election officials or use her office’s multilingual voter hotline.
“When we have an attempt to actually undermine the Constitution … and make mockery of our courts and those kinds of things, that is a serious election [violation],” said Weber. “If voters choose not to use their power, then somebody else will use it for them.”
“Do not let anyone keep you from voting,” she added. “If you have fears about voting, you have fears about being attacked by individuals or questioned, that’s even more of a reason to vote.”
More information on where and how to vote by Nov. 3 is available here.
SELEN OZTURK
ACoM editor and research director Selen Ozturk was born in Istanbul and raised in the Bay Area. She holds a philosophy degree from UC Berkeley. Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, SFGATE, Bay City News, PopMatters, and Senses of Cinema, among many other outlets.
