Surprise, surprise. California voters are raising concerns about the flood of mail-in ballots going out for the Golden State’s leftist-led gerrymandering scam known as Proposition 50.
From troubling holes in voter envelopes to residents receiving multiple ballots ahead of next month’s referendum, the election integrity questions only add more heat to a controversial ballot issue ironically known as the Election Rigging Response Act.
‘Wake-up Call’
In Modesto, voter Kevin Scott told ABC 10 that he found two mail-in ballots for Prop 50 in his mailbox last week. The envelopes, he said, appeared identical, bearing his name, address, and the same code numbers.
“Well, I was stunned,” Scott told the news outlet. “I’m pretty upset that this happened.”
No need to worry, nothing to see here, Stanislaus County Registrar of Voters Donna Linder explained to ABC10. She said there are various reasons a so-called “suspend and reissue” order could be triggered. But Scott said none apply to his situation.
The concerned Northern California voter told the Sacramento station that he has completed and mailed in the first ballot he received, and he planned to shred the second one.
“I don’t want them in anybody else’s hand,” Scott said.
Linder told ABC10 that the state’s election system is set up to allow only one vote to be counted. But, as Scott noted, elections are prone to errors and his experience should be a “wake-up call” for California election officials.
“I’m probably not the only one that got these… just beware, and it’s just not right,” he told ABC10.
In Sacramento, voters have complained about holes in the envelopes of their Prop 50 mail-in ballots. If positioned just right, the hole can be a window into how the individual voted.
Alan Wiggett told CBS News Sacramento that he’s worried someone could tamper with his ballot.
“If someone were unscrupulous and didn’t like how I voted, they could double mark it, which would invalidate my vote,” he said. “It makes it too easy for bad actors.”
Sacramento Registrar spokesman Ken Casparis shrugged off the concern, telling the news outlet it’s a “nonissue.” He insists the envelope hole does not present an election integrity problem, and, in fact, serves a purpose. It helps verify when a ballot has been removed from the envelope and gives the visually impaired “something to feel so they know where to sign their name,” Casparis said.
He suggested that voters should just fold the ballot in a way that their vote can’t be seen through the envelope hole. CBS News Sacramento reports that Sacramento County election officials have received several calls and emails with similar concerns since the Proposition 50 ballots first started being mailed out.
Of course, the news story posted on YouTube comes with the usual disclaimer from the Bipartisan Policy Center, which is anything but nonpartisan. The left-of-center think tank, which formerly promoted liberal energy policy, insists that “Mail Voting is Safe and Secure.”
Not always.
‘The Dangers of Mass Mail-In Voting’
“Mass mail-in voting increases opportunities for error and fraud in states that do not maintain clean voter rolls. For instance, in the last two elections, there were reports from multiple states of individuals receiving multiple ballots at their address, ballots being delivered to addresses of people either deceased or no longer residing in the state, and to addresses of vacant houses or apartments,” the House Republican Policy Committee reported in a 2024 policy paper headlined, “The Dangers of Mass Mail-In Voting.”
Left-leaning voter groups assert fraud rarely happens in universal vote-by-mail. But ask the folks in Paterson, N.J., about that.
In 2020, a New Jersey judge invalidated a city council election there after he found the Third Ward contest was “rife with mail in vote procedural violations.” A councilman and a councilman-elect were among four people charged with criminal conduct involving mail-in ballots during the election, CNN reported at the time.
Judge Ernest Caposela ordered a new election.
The closer the contest, the greater concern for voter fraud with mail-in ballots. A Democrat operative told the New York Post in August 2020 that such election fraud is “more the rule than the exception”
“His dirty work has taken him through the weeds of municipal and federal elections in Paterson, Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Hoboken and Hudson County and his fingerprints can be found in local legislative, mayoral and congressional races across the Garden State,” the Post reported on the whistleblower, who requested anonymity for fear of being criminally charged. “Some of the biggest names and highest office holders in New Jersey have benefited from his tricks, according to campaign records The Post reviewed.”
Several states allow leftist nonprofit organizations to register voters and even to manage ballot drop boxes. In battleground Wisconsin, a known Democrat operative was given the keys to the room that stored Green Bay’s 2020 presidential absentee ballots, thanks to the Zuckbucks scandal that demanded cities receiving significant private grants work with certain liberal groups.
‘Undermines Democracy’
Beyond the ballot security concerns surrounding California’s Proposition 50 referendum, the wisdom of the Gavin Newsom-driven redistricting plan is raising all kinds of red flags in the deep blue state.
The ballot issue aimed at rewriting the state’s political maps to give Democrats even more congressional seats in Congress is as partisan a gerrymander as they come. And the referendum would at least temporarily kill the bipartisan maps commission that leftists have long claimed is a much fairer way to draw political lines.
“As elected district attorneys, we are committed to upholding public trust through transparency, fairness, and the rule of law. We strongly oppose Proposition 50, which seeks to dismantle the voter-approved California Citizens Redistricting Commission and reinstate partisan gerrymandering—a flawed process rejected by Californians through Proposition 11 (2008) and Proposition 20 (2010),” assert the state DAs, including Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman and Yolo County top prosecutor Jeff Reisig, past president of the DA Association.
“Proposition 50 undermines democracy by prioritizing politicians’ power instead of preserving voter-approved reforms that improve community representation,” the letter states.