Fact Check: Will California’s vote-by-mail order really lead to election fraud in November?
This story has been updated to reflect recent news events.
Republicans have renewed their effort to stop, or at least discourage, mail voting.
The GOP’s latest bid to curtail mail voting echoes the party’s attempt this spring to thwart California’s mail strategy. The party claimed in a lawsuit — which it has since dropped — that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to allow every registered California voter to vote by mail is a “recipe for disaster” that will trigger widespread fraud and abuse.
The mail ballot issue has simmered ever since, and Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s campaign filed a lawsuit against the state of Nevada’s plan to provide all active voters with absentee ballots.
The issue of funding for the Postal Service has become a flashpoint in the deadlocked White House-congressional negotiations over an economic relief package.
Democrats are insisting that the Postal Service get enough money to handle election ballots efficiently and quickly, and ease rules that have slowed mail delivery. Republicans counter that the mail ballot controversy is not a Postal Service issue.
Republicans want to make their mail ballot case in court.
“The RNC has a vital interest in protecting the ability of Republican voters to cast, and Republican candidates to receive, effective votes in Nevada elections and elsewhere,” said the lawsuit against Nevada. The state’s new law, passed by a Democratic-controlled legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, permits election officials to send every eligible voter a mail-in ballot.
The state’s Republican Party and the Republican National Committee also joined the suit.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread throughout the country, some states have looked to expand mail-in voting options ahead of November’s election. Trump has long claimed that expanded mail-in voting will lead to fraud in the election. Independent studies have found voting-by-mail rarely results in fraud.
Trump has barely relented. Earlier this week, he tweeted that “In an illegal late night coup, Nevada’s clubhouse Governor made it impossible for Republicans to win the state.”
He maintained the post office “could never handle the Traffic of Mail-In Votes without preparation. Using Covid to steal the state. See you in Court!”
Trump has softened his stance slightly, saying mail ballots could work in Florida and Arizona, where electoral systems are run by his party. Trump votes in Florida.
The battle over mail voting has spilled into the negotiations over an economic relief package in Congress. Democrats are insisting that the Postal Service get enough money to handle election ballots efficiently and quickly.
Trump and California
This spring, Trump suggested that that Newsom would be presiding over what will be a rigged election. Trump’s tweet got an unprecedented response from Twitter, which urged readers to “get the facts about mail-in ballots,” and then took readers to material that debunked his claims..
The president tweeted in May that “The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, ....living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!”
The same day Trump tweeted, Twitter fact-checked tweets and under the Trump tweet advised readers to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.” To the left of that advice is an exclamation mark in a circle.
Clicking on that note sends the reader to a page that explains:
“On Tuesday, President Trump made a series of claims about potential voter fraud after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an effort to expand mail-in voting in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. These claims are unsubstantiated, according to CNN, Washington Post and others. Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.”
The Bee found that independent studies and experts have repeatedly found that voting by mail does not lead to much abuse at all.
In fact, any sort of voter fraud is rare. The federal Centers for Disease Control is encouraging mail-in voting where allowed.
While there are slight risks of fraud in voting by mail, ”the sort of mass conspiracy the president is talking about can’t happen undetected,” said Justin Levitt, an election law expert and professor of law at LMU Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. The system has too many safeguards, he said.
Newsom on May 8 issued an executive order allowing every registered voter in California to receive a mail-in ballot for the November 3 general election. In June, the legislature, with Republican as well as Democratic support, passed legislation.
In-person voting would still be available at polling places throughout the state. Most registered voters will be mailed a ballot 29 days before Election Day. Military and overseas voters will be mailed their ballots 45 days before Election Day. More than three-fourths of state votes got a mail ballot for the March 3 presidential primary.
Potential for Fraud?
The Santa Clara-based Election Integrity Project has warned that more than 458,000 people who have either moved from or died in the state will be sent ballots this fall.
Nationwide studies, however, have found very little evidence that mail-in voting leads to widespread fraud or abuse.
The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice conducted what it termed “a meticulous review of elections that had been investigated for voter fraud,” and found “minuscule incident rates of ineligible individuals fraudulently casting ballots at the polls – no more than 0.0025 percent.
The center said that “numerous reports have confirmed our finding that voter fraud is exceedingly rare. Research shows that voter fraud is similarly rare with mail ballots.”
A major Republican argument is that by sending ballots to all registered voters, those ballots could wind up with people no longer eligible to vote.
The GOP had cited a 2012 Pew Center on the States’ Election Initiatives study showing that one of eight voter registrations was no longer valid or had “significant inaccuracies.”
That study found 2.75 million people were registered in more than one state, and more than 1.8 million “voters” had died.
“Because of these widespread inaccuracies, a state that sends ballots to all registered voters will necessarily send ballots to persons with fake registrations, invalid registrations, or outdated registrations,” the Republicans said.
Five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah — now conduct all elections by mail. Twenty-one states, including California, allow local jurisdictions to conduct all-mail elections. In 2016, 23.6% of voters cast absentee ballots or voted by mail, according to the federal Election Assistance Commission.
In 2016, 57.9% of California ballots were cast by mail in the general election, and in 2018, mail ballots accounted for 65.3%, according to the Secretary of State’s office. Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Trump in the state in 2016 with 61% of the vote.
A System with Safeguards
Loyola’s Levitt looked at more than 1 billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2020. He found 45 credible instances of identity fraud of of the sort ID rules are designed to stop.
It could be slightly easier to cast a fraudulent mail ballot, he said, and there is concern about coercion. When someone votes in person, they can usually go into the booth alone.
But Levitt noted the system has all kinds of safeguards. Signatures on the mail ballot must match those on file. Election officials monitor IP addresses for multiple ballot requests. And both state and federal law bar impersonating someone else for voting purposes.
Both the federal Justice Department and state officials can prosecute violations.
Newsom’s order does not make the case, the RNC says,”does not state or even intimate that any election laws – save those that pertain to in-person voting – threaten to spread COVID-19.”
But on March 27, the Centers for Disease Control issued a series of guidelines aimed at encouraging voters to “use voting methods that minimize direct contact with other people and reduce crowd size at polling stations.”
At the top of the list of recommendations: “Encourage mail-in methods of voting if allowed in the jurisdiction.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 2:32 PM with the headline "Fact Check: Will California’s vote-by-mail order really lead to election fraud in November?."
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