OPINION
California – Don’t expect a dramatic press conference from the Trump administration declaring California’s elections clean. More likely, the investigations will quietly fade into the background and eventually disappear from the headlines without any grand conclusion.
In my view, that outcome is almost inevitable. The reason is simple. California’s election laws have been written in such a way that many practices critics consider vulnerable to abuse are perfectly legal. If the conduct itself is authorized by law, federal investigators are unlikely to ever establish the kind of “widespread fraud” that many Americans are expecting them to uncover.
President Donald Trump recently accused Democrats of cheating in California’s primary election, prompting First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli to announce that his office and the FBI have multiple election fraud investigations underway in Los Angeles. Essayli’s office also confirmed that Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Renner visited a Los Angeles County ballot processing center to observe the vote counting process. Reports described the visit as routine and similar to those available to members of the public.
Those comments may sound encouraging to voters concerned about election integrity. But they are likely to produce exactly what previous investigations have produced … years of unanswered questions … followed by silence.
California Elections Code Section 3017 allows a voter who is unable to return a ballot to designate another person to do so. The designated person may hand deliver the ballot or place it in the mail. Criminal penalties exist for bribery, intimidation, tampering, and fraud, but the collection and delivery of ballots by third parties is itself legal.
Supporters argue the practice improves access for elderly and disabled voters. Critics call it legalized ballot harvesting.
Under California law, political organizations, activists, churches, unions, or nonprofit groups may legally collect ballots from voters. If investigators discovered nonprofit groups organizing ballot collection efforts among homeless populations, it would not automatically constitute criminal conduct. Unless prosecutors could prove bribery, coercion, or tampering, much of the activity critics complain about would be perfectly lawful.
Fox 11 recently reported that Essayli referenced a case involving a Marina del Rey woman accused of paying individuals, including homeless people on Skid Row, to register to vote. Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, also known as “Anika,” pleaded guilty to one federal count of paying another person to register to vote. She faces up to five years in prison when she is sentenced Aug. 31.
Authorities have not alleged that the conduct affected statewide races. Nevertheless, the case highlights concerns long raised by election integrity advocates.
Even if investigators were to uncover isolated examples involving ballots cast in the names of deceased individuals or by noncitizens, history suggests such cases would be treated as individual violations rather than evidence of a larger conspiracy. Officials and media outlets would almost certainly characterize them as statistically insignificant and insufficient to alter election outcomes.
Likewise, even if prosecutors managed to bring a handful of cases involving illegal voting, supporters of the system would likely point to those prosecutions as evidence that the safeguards are working. Critics, meanwhile, would argue that the cases merely expose vulnerabilities that are impossible to quantify.
That is because proving widespread election fraud requires more than finding isolated violations. Prosecutors would have to establish a coordinated effort on a massive scale. Such a burden is extraordinarily difficult to satisfy, especially after ballots have been separated from identifying information and mixed with millions of legitimate votes.
Critics need look no further than the Los Angeles mayoral race to understand why public confidence has eroded. Councilmember Nithya Raman climbed into second place on June 7, overtaking Spencer Pratt as post Election Day ballots continued to be counted. To skeptics, the distribution of those later ballots appeared anomalous, with Raman benefiting disproportionately while neither Karen Bass nor Pratt experienced comparable gains.
Some election integrity advocates view such swings as evidence that California’s system invites speculation that ballots collected through organized harvesting operations could be strategically submitted over time. There is no publicly available evidence demonstrating that such conduct occurred in this race… but the inability to either prove or definitively disprove those suspicions is itself part of the criticism leveled against California’s election laws.
The real debate, in my view, is not whether California elections are run according to the law. They are. The debate is whether the law itself creates conditions that make abuses difficult to detect and nearly impossible to prove after the fact.
That is why Bill Essayli’s statements strike me as little more than empty words. Announcing investigations sounds impressive, but prosecutors cannot prosecute conduct that lawmakers have already legalized. They cannot declare ballot harvesting fraudulent when California law expressly permits third party ballot collection.
Reuters and other news organizations have noted that election officials insist there is no evidence supporting claims of widespread fraud in the governor’s race or the Los Angeles mayor’s race. They may very well be correct according to the legal standards that currently exist. But that misses the point entirely.
Critics are not necessarily claiming that large numbers of people are breaking California law. They are arguing that California lawmakers have constructed a system that places convenience ahead of transparency and verification.
And if the rules themselves permit the conduct, federal investigators should not expect to uncover some giant criminal enterprise hiding in plain sight.
The most likely outcome is not a bombshell report. It is a slow fade. The investigations will drift out of public view, the headlines will move on, and Californians will continue voting under the same rules that produced the controversy in the first place.
Whether those rules deserve the public’s trust is another matter altogether.
Sources: California Elections Code §3017; Los Angeles Times; ABC7 Los Angeles; Fox 11 Los Angeles; Reuters.