"Massive Number” of Ineligible Voters Get Ballots in CA

As a recent candidate for US Congress in California’s March 3 Primary, Carl DeMaio saw first hand how bad California’s voting system is run.

“From voters receiving duplicate and triplicate ballots to ballots being mailed out to dead people and voters that moved out of the state 5-10 years ago, California’s voting system is mailing out a massive number of ballots each election to ineligible voters,” said DeMaio. “It’s almost like California politicians have set up a system to encourage fraud,” DeMaio warned.

DeMaio is back as host of his radio show - the DeMaio Report - which airs 3-6pm weekdays on NewsRadio 600 KOGO in Southern California.

For the past week DeMaio asked voters to contact him if they wanted to share stories of voting irregularities. “The response was overwhelming - with many reporting they received duplicate ballots, had dead relatives who received ballots, and have had ballots mailed to their homes for previous occupants who had moved 5-10 years earlier,” DeMaio said.

DeMaio dedicated two full hours to how California’s voting system is beset by problems.

DeMaio began the show by disclosing that in his recent Congressional campaign, their direct mail vendor reported the county’s voter registration rolls contained at least 11% of erroneous voters. The mail house was able to determine this problem simply by comparing the list of voters currently registered in the 50th Congressional District with the list of individuals who have signed up for the US Postal Service’s NCOA (National Change-of-Address) database to forward their mail once they move.

“An 11% error rate in the 50th Congressional District would result in more than 40,000 ballots being mailed out to the wrong people,” DeMaio said.

One guest on the show recounted how she received THREE ballots with slight variations in her name. Another guest called in to report he moved to the East Coast in 2015, but just recently found out he had received 5 mail-in ballots since then.

Since each county in California is responsible for maintaining accurate voter files and purging ineligible voters, DeMaio and co-host Lou Penrose interviewed San Diego County Registrar of Voters Michael Vu.

Vu said that current California practices prohibit him from removing individuals from the voter rolls without extensive procedures. Vu cited a fear that individuals could be “disenfranchised” if the voter rolls were aggressively cleansed.

DeMaio countered that every single ineligible ballot cast in an election would immediately disenfranchise a legal voter’s vote.

DeMaio is calling for a complete audit of every county’s voter rolls to 1) identify and remove duplicate and triplicate registrations, 2) remove anyone on NCOA who has moved from their current address and notify them of the need to re-register at their correct address, and 3) a rolling review of voter registrations to confirm citizenship status.

DeMaio also called for a suspension of California’s Motor-Voter program that has been plagued by documented problems of erroneous registrations, duplicate registrations, and even allowing illegal immigrants to register to vote.

“California should serve as a stark warning to the entire nation that conducting all-mail-in ballot elections is an invitation to voter fraud plain and simple,” DeMaio concluded.