by Edward Ring
Elections in California are a travesty, as is calling what just happened progress for the state's Republican Party.
Wishful thinking aside, California did not participate in the realignment that, on November 5, 2024, may have transformed American politics forever. The positive spin on California’s dismal failure to liberate itself from failing Democrat policies rests on what are, in the cold light of day, modest achievements. California’s voters approved Proposition 36, a ballot initiative that made criminal behavior a crime again; they recalled a few Soros DAs, and GOP candidates logged a net gain of two seats in the state assembly and one seat in the state senate. It’s not enough.
To begin with, the fact that voters had to overrule a corrupt legislature and judiciary to compel law enforcement to once again enforce the law is no reason to celebrate. It’s just one first step, in just one area, against a party that wields layers upon layers of stupefying power in every area of policy. The State Supreme Court is still packed with Democrat appointees. The state bureaucracy, consisting of a bewildering and almost innumerable collection of regulatory agencies and commissions, is under the absolute control of public sector unions. Every higher state office is occupied by Democrats, including activist Attorney General Rob Bonta, a machine politician who aims to succeed Newsom as California’s next governor. Democrat politicians still enjoy a 62-17 (one seat is vacant) advantage over Republicans in the state assembly and a 31-9 advantage in the state senate. Newsom is still governor, and now he’s called a special session of the state legislature to “Trump-proof” the state.
Everyone knows that the consequences of California’s failed policies on energy, water, transportation, housing, homelessness, crime, and education inevitably roll out to afflict the rest of the country. Lobbying, “climate partnerships,” and similar end runs on national policy, and lawfare—which is about to be turned up a notch—are all California specialties. But the biggest example of California’s power is its ability to decisively influence the US Congress by virtue of having its largest congressional delegation. And this is where the California GOP’s failure on November 5 was so big it overshadows any traces of success. California’s GOP is on track to lose three seats in the US Congress, falling from a mere 12 out of 52 to only 9 out of 52. And how they lost these seats reveals an outgunned GOP organization that could not overcome the most corrupt, rigged system of voting in the country.
Californians have correctly pointed out that the state’s loose requirements to vote introduce the potential for voter fraud. That’s true, but it’s also an excuse for failure. There were ten battleground congressional districts in California, and the GOP only won four of them. But they might have run the table. If they had, instead of nearly handing control of the US Congress to the Democrats, they would have given the GOP a still slim but much more comfortable majority.California’s election this year had a relatively low turnout, only 73.3 percent compared to 80.1 percent in 2020. In a presidential election universally acknowledged as even more consequential than the last one, an estimated 1.7 million fewer Californians cast ballots than in 2020. Maybe voters felt that California was a lock for Kamala Harris and didn’t care about down-ballot races, but they should have felt the same way about Biden in 2020. Whatever the reason, voters stayed home, and that meant the organization with the best get-out-the-vote operation was going to win the close races. California’s perverse election rules make GOTV embarrassingly easy if you have the operation to pull it off.
The strength of the Democrats in California four years ago was thanks to the legalization of ballot harvesting and universal vote-by-mail. But the Republicans countered in 2024. As mailed ballots were received and processed prior to Election Day, Republican counts were surprisingly high. But this early strong performance just alerted the Democrat campaigns to where they needed higher turnout and where they needed to find it. And they had a weapon that proved to be unbeatable—same-day registration.
In California, it is legal for eligible but unregistered voters to register and vote right up until and including Election Day. Their votes are cast on what the state calls “conditional voter registration ballots.” As of November 8, there were 371,840 of these same-day registration ballots still uncounted, along with 76,133 “provisional ballots,” which election officials accept from voters who “believe they are registered to vote even though their names are not on the official voter registration list at the polling place.” Also unprocessed as of November 8 were 236,653 “vote-by-mail ballots received after Election Day thru E+7” (the state accepts mailed ballots up to a week after Election Day) and 45,519 “other” ballots, which are “ballots that are damaged or could not be machine-read and need to be remade, and ballots diverted by optical scanners for further review.”
Altogether, three days after the election, 730,145 ballots in one of these four dubious categories were “unprocessed” in the State of California. Surely within these four categories, there are opportunities for fraud. For that matter, one may suggest some fraudulent votes may have been included within the additional 4,596,972 ballots that lacked the distinction of being “provisional,” or “conditional,” or “received up to 7 days after the election,” or “diverted for further review,” but were simply mailed in and received before election day. In all, on November 8, there were still 5,472,423 “unprocessed ballots.” A week later, on November 14, there were still 1,658,803. By November 17 that number had dwindled to a still very substantial 784,448. As of December 2, only 37,533 remain.
Suggesting voter fraud is impossible in California is partisan misinformation. But it misses something of equal significance. Same-day voter registration, even more than vote harvesting, confers an advantage to the campaign and the party that has the biggest GOTV operation. Imagine the scene at UC Merced during election week in a congressional district where GOP incumbent John Duarte trailed as of November 2 by a whopping 231 votes. Imagine professional Democrat Party vote gatherers fanning out across campus, targeting students enrolled in majors with an emphasis on sociology, gender, race, and racial justice. Imagine their pitch: “We have to stop Trump,” “We have to protect abortion rights,” “We have to fight race and gender discrimination.”
And voila, another registrant, another voter, another ballot, and Duarte, that GOP racist, has to earn one more vote somewhere else to keep up. Same-day voting, legal in California, must have favored Democrats. It will be a while before we know the party registration statistics on the more than 371,840 people who registered and voted at the last minute in California. But even if Republicans had the operation to execute same-day voter outreach, where would they go? Their potential voters are dispersed and busy working, whereas the Democrats need only go to college campuses. When you’re looking for 231 votes in a battleground district, the margin of victory can be found in front of lecture halls.
Ultimately, the fact that 1.6 million fewer Californians voted this year compared to 2020 means that either party could have won in the battleground districts if they got out there and dragged people to the polls. Republican voters had more reason to vote than Democrats because they knew the state was failing its people, or they wouldn’t be registered as Republicans. Also, maybe the Republicans needed to run better campaigns. Duarte and his opponent, Democrat Adam Gray, both spent millions on television ads featuring people with heavy Chicano accents saying the other guy is a bad guy. Is that the best we can do? And, in other close races, the GOP consented to allowing perennial candidates to run who had enough name recognition and donations to advance to the general election but not enough to win.
Election laws in California are structured to favor Democrats because they have a structural advantage thanks to the political power of public sector unions that are overwhelmingly partisan in favor of Democrats. Bigger government means more union dues. More union dues mean more political donations. More political donations mean more Democrats get elected. That’s wrong, but equally flawed is the moral justification for California’s election laws: making voting accessible to everyone. Why?
Why should it be so easy to vote that a paid operative can approach someone on Election Day, hand them a registration form and a ballot, and walk away with another vote for the candidate they’re confident this targeted prospect will favor? Is this how democracy succeeds, or, as California ought to exemplify, is this how democracy fails? Voting is a privilege that should require some effort. We are privileged to drive cars on public roads, but we aren’t automatically granted driver’s licenses. California needs to restrict mail-in ballots to people who genuinely cannot vote any other way. California also needs to restore a requirement to register to vote six weeks before an election. They need to require an ID to vote, they need to ban vote harvesting, and they need to stop accepting mail ballots that are received after Election Day. They need to ban automatic voter registration at the Dept. of Motor Vehicles. And they need to compile election results within 24 hours of the polls closing.
Anyone calling these reforms voter suppression is wrong and has a partisan agenda. There’s a moral worth in requiring citizens to proactively obtain the privilege of voting. It skews the pool of registrants ever so much towards a more responsible electorate, and that’s a good thing for democracy.
Elections in California are a travesty, as is calling what just happened progress for the state’s Republican Party.
Edward Ring
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/04/the-corruption-of-democracy-california-style/
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