The DOJ accuses California of blocking a federal audit of voter rolls as the dispute over registration records intensifies in the Ninth Circuit.
Tyler Robinson, the man accused of killing Charlie Kirk, will return to Utah court Friday at 11 a.m. Eastern for an evidentiary hearing. Robinson, 23, will appear before Fourth District Judge Tony Graf Jr. in criminal court in Provo, where the judge will likely rule on whether Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard violated a […]
FBI special agents searched an office of a progressive organization in Ohio Thursday as part of a Justice Department investigation into its voter registration efforts, three people familiar with the matter told NBC News
A federal judge on Thursday blocked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from suing ActBlue, citing concerns that the lawsuit is an attempt to sabotage his political rival’s campaign. U.S. District Judge Richard Gaylore Stearns’s ruling in Massachusetts marks a loss for Paxton, who filed a lawsuit against the Democratic donor platform in April, alleging it […]
Brent crude falls as optimism rises strait of Hormuz could reopen over the weekendBusiness live – latest updatesGlobal oil prices fell on Friday to lows not seen since the first week of the Iran crisis after Donald Trump claimed he was close to reaching a peace deal with Tehran.The price of Brent crude began to tumble from about $93 a barrel in overnight trade after the US president called off further military strikes against Iran scheduled for the evening. Continue reading...
Spencer Pratt’s pratfall in LA, Graham Platner’s victory, prediction markets, and other takeaways from the California and Maine primary elections. The post The Right’s “Election Fraud” Cry for Midterms Previewed in Primaries appeared first on The Intercept.
“Accuracy comes before speed.” That was California Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s message to voters in a press release issued two days after officials began counting ballots from June’s primary. In the same release, she reminded voters that the count could continue for up to 30 days after Election Day.Weber argued that California is “taking the time to do this work correctly” to protect voters’ rights and ensure election integrity.After 2022, 2024, and this year’s primary, the problem no longer looks like a glitch. It looks like a pattern created by poor policy choices.She is right about one thing: Accuracy matters.Every lawful ballot should be counted. Every voter should be confident that election officials will get the count right.But a week after Election Day, California was still processing 1.4 million ballots under a system that routinely extends vote counting for days and sometimes weeks after voters cast their ballots.That raises a question California’s leaders seem increasingly unwilling to answer: Why are voters repeatedly told they must choose between accurate elections and timely results?This is not the first time California has found itself in this mess.In 2022, several California congressional races remained unresolved long after Election Day while control of the U.S. House hung in limbo. Two years later, California took 38 days to certify its election results. Now in 2026, Californians are again waiting weeks after Election Day for final results.The details change. The outcome does not. Californians keep waiting.So why does this keep happening?The answer starts with California election law. According to CalMatters, the delay is due in part to policies California adopted to make voting easier after the COVID-19 pandemic: Every registered voter receives a mail ballot, and ballots remain valid as long as they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive at county elections offices within seven days.Election law expert Hans von Spakovsky has argued that California’s slow vote count is not an isolated incident or unexpected complication. It is the way the state’s election system is designed.RELATED: ‘Fraudster’s paradise’: Feds plan to file election fraud charges in California Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesIn other words, California is not experiencing an unexpected delay. It is experiencing the predictable results of the laws it chose.Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) helped cement those policies in 2021 when he signed AB 37, making universal vote by mail permanent. His office promoted the law as “landmark elections legislation” that would expand vote by mail and strengthen election integrity.Yet, Californians are now being sold the idea that waiting days or weeks for election results is simply the reality of modern elections.It is not. It is the reality of California elections.Timely results are part of election integrity. The longer ballots remain uncounted, the longer election officials must maintain secure chains of custody, verification systems, and storage. Delay does not automatically mean fraud. But delay does create more opportunities for confusion, suspicion, and avoidable controversy.If California leaders want faster results, they should examine the policies that slow them down.Instead, voters are told these delays are the unavoidable cost of administering elections in a large state. That explanation falls apart under scrutiny.Look at Florida. The 2000 presidential election exposed serious weaknesses in that state’s election system. Legislators responded by reforming the state’s election administration and ballot-processing procedures.Today, Florida is one of the fastest states in the country to report election results.Florida allows election officials to begin processing mail ballots before Election Day, giving counties a head start on verification. The state also requires most mail ballots to be received by Election Day rather than days afterward. Voters whose signatures are missing or do not match generally have a much shorter window to fix those problems than California voters do.Florida proves that accuracy and speed are not mutually exclusive.California has chosen a different approach.This is about more than administrative efficiency. In five months, Californians will return to the polls for the midterm election. Voters deserve confidence that the results will be accurate. They also deserve confidence that those results will arrive on time.RELATED: Homeless people on Skid Row claim they were paid to vote — and not for Spencer Pratt Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times/Getty ImagesLawmakers should examine whether ballots should continue arriving after Election Day and still be counted. They should review whether lengthy ballot-curing timelines help voters or simply extend uncertainty.
As election integrity debates continue to rage across California, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck believes state leaders are making a dangerous mistake: treating skepticism as a threat instead of addressing the concerns behind it. “What’s happening in California is dangerous, and ... if you can be reasonable and you can listen without the lens of your tribe, there is a way to an answer here. But nobody seems, especially on the left, nobody seems to want to actually fix the problem,” Glenn says. “And so what do they want to do? They want to shut you up,” he adds, explaining that Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that “said fines and jail time [for] three years if you are interfering with the election.” “This particular penalty is aimed at people who physically walk off with boxes of ballots,” Glenn explains. “Listen to the language around it.”“The governor wrote a letter telling his officials to ‘count fast’ so the ‘election lies’ don’t take hold. Stop and think about that for a second. Wait a minute. The chief executive of the largest state in the union has appointed himself the man who decides which doubts are lies,” he says. “And in the same season, his allies pass a provision that tells election observers they may no longer challenge the signatures on the ballot they’re watching get counted. So, they didn’t criminalize your doubt. They did something quieter,” he continues. “They turned down the lights in the room where the counting happens. And you’re told it’s a conspiracy theory to ask, ‘Why did it get so dark?’” Glenn explains that a glaring issue with this is that the government cannot ever “be the arbiter of truth.” “Especially when the question on the table is about the government itself. You cannot let the accused run the evidence room,” he says. “You’re accusing California of having fraud, and what do they do? They say, ‘No, we’re in charge.’ Right? You’re the one that everybody’s saying is causing the fraud, and they’re saying, ‘No, you can’t question because there’s no fraud,’” he continues. “That doesn’t help anything.” “This is not a conservative idea or a liberal idea. It’s just how you keep a free people free,” he adds.
A Republican election expert slammed one of the top MAGA demands as impossible and "asinine in the extreme."In a recent interview, Stephen Richer, the former Maricopa County recorder and a fellow at the Cato Institute, tore apart the idea of hand counting ballots.Legal reporter Adam Klasfeld asked Richer if the "loudly demanded" idea from election denialists would "do anything to make elections operate faster or more accurately?""This is asinine in the extreme," Richer said. "If you think California is tabulating ballots slowly now, as I do, and we can get into how California can speed that up, but they wouldn't be done for six months if we were having them hand count all of those ovals."Richer brought up that supporters of hand tabulation argue, "France can do it," but countered, "France has one election every so often, and they have one item on the ballot."He explained that California, by contrast, "will probably have about eighty-plus contests" on the average ballot in November."You multiply that over a few million, not just a few million, but close to 20 million voters," Richer explained. "It would be far less accurate. It would be far less fast and be far more expensive."U.S. election officials "do hand count ballots" for audits, and "that's an important feature of an election system." He also supported paper ballots, saying they're "a good thing because it creates an immutable, unhackable, auditable paper trail."