California, and the dangerous sudden resurgence of GOP voter fraud fever

He said on Fox Business Network’s Charles Gasparino X at noon Sunday: “I hate the president’s ‘stolen election’ remarks …”

But just two hours later, Gasparino was entertaining the idea that the election was stolen. After former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger pointed out that President Donald Trump claimed last week’s election in California was “rigged,” Gasparino responded: “Maybe so.”

There is zero evidence of fraud in the election results in California. Like CNN’s Elex Michaelson explainedThe state’s vote-counting process takes time because of how elections are run, and late-counted mail votes have often been heavily in favor of Democrats because Trump has turned Republicans against voting by mail.

But a combination of indifference to these details, online silos, and pure politics have spread like wildfire on social media, with theories that Democrats are stealing the California governor’s race and the Los Angeles mayoral race. It even includes Republicans who have previously distanced themselves from such claims of voter fraud.

After five years of voter fraud fever on the right had calmed somewhat, it is back with a vengeance, ignoring the fact that this rhetoric led to ugly and violent places in the seat of the US government on January 6, 2021.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis most recently epitomized this trend.

DeSantis has never been a prominent election denier after 2020. And as he challenges Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries, He denied Trump’s claims “None of the theories that were put forward turned out to be true,” he said of a stolen election.

But on Wednesday, DeSantis decried that new voting parties in California “always seem to go one way.”

“Count until you get the result you want?“DeSantis added conspiratorially.

The biggest problem with Trump’s voter fraud campaign after the 2020 election was that he had trouble getting his own Justice Department to take his claims seriously. Both his current and former attorney general resisted, and Trump infamously tried to elevate to the post someone who would buy into his wild claims, Jeffrey Clark.

But today the Department of Justice is floating the idea that something is wrong.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles cited so-called “serious structural vulnerabilities” when announcing “multiple election fraud investigations” over the weekend.

And on Monday, Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was fueling such doubts on CNBC. While he stated that he did not claim fraud, California’s “fraud opportunity.”

Just saying that goes beyond the point of how prosecutors, who are generally concerned strictly with evidence and not theories, should behave.

Clayton was also asked twice: false viral claims In the Los Angeles mayoral race, numerous votes were added to the totals, none of which went to Republican candidate Spencer Pratt. Clayton never denied this claim; The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, however, We have already refuted these claims.

House Speaker Mike Johnson went so far as to suggest that it would be impossible to obtain evidence to support fraud claims, claiming the situation in California “smells like heaven.”

“Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far impossible to prove,” he said. “But I think everyone knows instinctively that something is wrong here.”

Social media is also full of people suggesting that it’s unthinkable that Democrats would gain so much after day one, even though it’s a common occurrence in California. Trump leaned into that narrative on Monday, saying there was “no way” Pratt would be left behind “with the great leadership he has.”

“The elections were rigged!” Trump said on Truth Social:

(In fact, that’s almost always the way things are in the Golden State; the gubernatorial candidacies of Pratt and former Fox News host Steve Hilton have sparked increased interest from more people on the right in California, which is often an afterthought in national elections.)

Conservative TV host Meghan McCain responding to a clip of Trump saying the California election was rigged in question“For what it’s worth, people who have never in my life mentioned stolen elections in any way are now saying this about California.”

This also spreads over a wider area. And disturbingly, this comes after years of diminishing election doubts.

Republicans underperformed in the 2022 midterm elections, mostly with the likes of Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake complaining about fraud while the rest of the party ignored her.

Trump’s victory in 2024 gave the GOP little reason to complain about alleged fraud. And the 2025 results were so decisive for Democrats (and only in a handful of states) that they didn’t spark such complaints.

Surveys show a decline in concerns about fraud. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that nearly 3 in 10 Americans and 6 in 10 Republicans in surveys conducted in 2021 and 2023 thought there was “robust evidence” of fraud in the 2020 election. But these figures dropped to 16% and 21%respectively, after the 2024 elections.

That being said, this is clearly still a tinderbox.

The March was called after Republicans spent months baselessly claiming that voting by undocumented immigrants was a big problem and pushing for legislation to prevent it. Marist College survey It showed that confidence in the fairness of upcoming elections is lower than at any point in recent years, including the 2020 election.

The poll also showed that 70 percent of Republicans expect fraud to mar the upcoming election.

April Fool’s Day Reuters-Ipsos poll It also showed that more than 8 in 10 Republicans believe noncitizens vote illegally in large numbers (there is no evidence of this) and are concerned about fraud in mail-in or absentee ballots (there is no evidence that this is a big problem).

It’s not hard to see how this could get ugly.

While voters have largely been spared very close election results in recent years, even a strong showing by Democrats in 2026 could lead to a tight fight for the Senate majority. A single close race could decide which party has great power.

California’s time-consuming vote counting process appears to have reawakened this sleeping giant within the American right. It seems that the passage of time and Trump’s efforts to rewrite the history of January 6 have accustomed people to the possible consequences.

In fact, even after the 2020 election, many prominent Republicans will surely to approve Trump’s theories; they are largely I diluted them or simply refused to agree with him.

But this time, the right also seems ready for the ride, happy to join him in sowing doubt despite the lack of evidence. That’s a frightening prospect five months before the 2026 election.

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