How easy is it for illegal votes to be cast in California?

Consider the absurd example of Laura Yourex. 

After receiving six voter registration cards at her home of two residents, Yourex, as a lark, and to prove a point, successfully registered her dog Maya to vote –– and then submitted ballots on her canine’s behalf. 

The real scandal is not that a woman was able to get her dog to vote, however. 

The actual threat to California’s democracy lies in the response of state officials when presented with evidence or allegations of serious problems in the state’s elections. 

Rather than work with people who attempt to identify potential vulnerabilities within the election system, California’s election officials either ignore them (at best) –– or work against them at every turn.

When Younex contacted the Orange County Registrar of Voters to inform county officials that her dog had not only been registered to vote, but had received an actual mail-in ballot, she wasn’t met with gratitude. 

For five years, she was met with total silence.

“I’ve given my picture of Maya and her ballot, and given my phone number and never would hear from anybody,” she told The California Post.

Until, one day, she did hear from election officials –– and found out she was being charged with a crime. 

Fortunately, four of the five felony charges were dismissed, which is appropriate for the nature of the offense. 

But it’s also indicative of the posture that California has taken toward other activists, whistleblowers, and even federal officials. 

There is documented proof that in addition to dogs, ineligible humans also receive ballots. 

In a lawsuit filed last year against Orange County Registrar Rob Page, the Department of Justice noted how “The Attorney General recently received a complaint from the family member of a noncitizen in Orange County indicating that the noncitizen received an unsolicited mail-in ballot from the Defendant, despite lack of citizenship.”

DOJ officials asked Page for evidence of the number of voter registration records in Orange County cancelled because the registrant did not satisfy the citizenship requirements for voter registration. 

In response, rather than act quickly and cooperatively to rectify the obvious error and violation of the law, Page provided a redacted list, removing Social Security and driver’s license numbers, in addition to images of signatures, preventing a thorough investigation by the DOJ.

Last year, Riverside County Sheriff and gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco seized 650,000 ballots, after a group of activists who performed an audit on the results of the redistricting ballot initiative identified what Bianco said was a discrepancy of 45,000 votes between what was received and what was certified to the state. 

---

Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters

The California Supreme Court ordered Bianco to pause his investigation this month, though it did assert an intention to to review the case itself.

For his part, the state’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Rob Bonta, cheered the court’s decision. 

“The Riverside County Sheriff willfully defied my direct orders, seized 650,000 ballots, misused criminal investigatory tools, and created a constitutional emergency in the process,” Bonta said in a statement.

Bonta has helped lead the fight against turning over California’s unredacted voter rolls to the Department of Justice, which, under the guidance of Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, is attempting to review all state voter rolls for errors and bloat. 

An analysis last year by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) found that California’s voter rolls have significant problems, illegal immigrants and animals aside. 

Issues include more than 94,000 names on the rolls that belong to dead people and over 57,000 people registered to vote in both California and a second state.  

This is, of course, where the real problems lie. When states mail every name on the voter rolls a ballot –– be they illegal, dead, or canine –– opportunities for election fraud emerge.

In one illustrative case, New York City’s Department of Investigations sent undercover agents to attempt to cast ballots on behalf of 63 voters who were still on its city’s rolls nearly two years after they should have been removed. 

Undercover agents were successful over 96% of the time (61 of the 63 attempts).

But that kind of transparency apparently will never happen in California, because it would require state officials to want to find out how bad the problems really are. 

Instead, California will focus its taxpayer-funded legal efforts on ignoring or fighting the people working to expose the fraud.

Eric Eggers is the author of “Fraud: How the Left Plans to Steal the Next Election” and the co-host of The Drill Down with Peter Schweizer.