Talk about being bad to the bone! A California woman is facing jail time after she allegedly registered her dog to vote and cast ballots on her pooch’s behalf not once — but twice.
Sixty-two year-old Laura Lee Yourex allegedly registered her dog, Maya Jean Yourex, to vote and cast ballots under the dog’s name in the 2021 gubernatorial recall election and 2022 primary election, The Los Angeles Times reported, citing the Orange County district attorney’s office. Only the 2021 was ballot was accepted, according to the report.
Yourex reportedly touted her alleged fraud, sharing a post in October of 2022 of Maya’s dog tag along with a mail-in ballot and the caption: “Maya is still getting her ballot,” despite Maya having already passed, as The Times reported.
The fraud was discovered after Yourex contacted the Orange County Registrar of Voters to report she had registered her dog — and cast ballots in her dog’s name, The Times reported. The County Registrar of Voters then contacted the district attorney’s office. Yourex faces up to six years of jail time after she was charged with “one count of registering a nonexistent person to vote, one count of perjury, one count of procuring a false or forged document to be filed and two counts of casting a ballot when not entitled to vote,” The Times reported.
That a dog was able to be registered to vote — and two votes casted on her behalf — is an indictment of California’s weak election safeguards.
Statewide elections in California do not require proof of residence, while federal elections do. As reported by The Times, that explains why the second ballot cast during the federal primaries was rejected. There are also other safeguards that could help keep pups — and other ineligible persons — of the voter rolls: voter ID, documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, in-person voting mandates.
Notably, the Trump administration sued Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page after Page allegedly refused to hand over records regarding the removal of 17 registered voters who lacked proper documentation and therefore ineligible to cast a ballot but nonetheless were still registered. The county Board of Supervisors refused to comply with the Department of Justice in August.
More than two dozen other states also received similar letters, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2