President Donald Trump accused Democrats of trying to steal the California primary elections amid reports that it could take weeks before the state’s final vote totals are known in multiple primary elections. He made the comments in two social media posts on his Truth Social account after midnight on Thursday.“The Dumocrats are at it again!” Trump said in his first post. “They are trying to steal the governor of California primary, and the mayor of Los Angeles, primary, away from two great Republican candidates. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of mail in ballots.”Trump has been a consistent and vocal critic of mail-in ballots and has regularly linked them to accusations of voter fraud. In the 2020 presidential election, Trump claimed that the election was rigged after large numbers of mail-in ballots were counted after polls closed on Election Day. In several states where Trump had an initial lead, the advantage evaporated after the mail-in ballots were counted. In recent months, he has called for banning mail-in ballots, even as he continues to link their use to fraud.
In March, Trump issued the executive order “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” which, about mail-in voting, recommended the use of “secure ballot envelope identifiers” such as bar codes to “provide a reliable, auditable mechanism to enforce Federal law without unduly burdening or infringing on the rights of eligible voters.”
