With less than a week to go until the California recall election, some Republicans are falsely claiming that votes are rigged in favor of Democrats and suggesting, without evidence, that Gov. Gavin Newsom can only win with fraudulent votes.
The claims are unsubstantiated, and echo similar false messages promoted by Republicans last year following the election of President Joe Biden.
Elder told reporters in Los Angeles on Wednesday that he believes “there might very well be shenanigans” in the recall election, but that he expects to win anyway because “so many Californians are angry about what’s going on,” according to CNN.
Elder said his campaign nevertheless is ready to file lawsuits and encouraged people to report any issues.
“We have a voter integrity board all set up – most of these are lawyers,” Elder said Wednesday, according to CNN. “So, when people hear things, they contact us. We’re going to file lawsuits in a timely fashion.”
A link on Elder’s campaign website, labeled as “report election incident,” takes users to a form to report incidents of voter fraud and sign a petition to investigate the results of the recall.
Some of the language on the site is written as though Newsom has already won. The page invites them to sign a petition to investigate the “twisted” results of the recall.
“We implore you…to join us in this fight as you are able, primarily by signing our petition demanding a special session of the California legislature to investigate and ameliorate the twisted results of this 2021 Recall Election of Governor Gavin Newsom,” the website says.
The petition states that voters who use “improperly formed ballots” have an advantage over those who vote at the polls and that instances of “undocumented ballots” were discovered prior to Sept. 14. It offers no evidence for either of those claims.
It also states that, if there is an audit of the recall election, county election officials should not be a part of the recount, because doing so would be similar to “allowing an alleged criminal to examine the crime scene,” the petition says.