Hundreds of Thousands of Ineligible Persons Could be Mailed Ballots if California Goes All-Mail in November Election

SANTA CLARITA, Calif., May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 28, Election Integrity Project, California (EIPCa) sent notice to California's Secretary of State (SOS) of the state's failure to comply with federal voter list maintenance laws. EIPCa's report, based on its analysis of California's official voter registration file, includes evidence that the coronavirus-related proposal to mail ballots to all California voters has heightened the risks to the integrity of the November 2020 election:

• Over 458,000 California registrants who have likely died or moved will be mailed ballots. These registrants have not voted or updated their registrations since November 2008 or prior. Though likely deceased or relocated, they remain classified as "active" status. Almost 178,000 have never voted. Almost 2,000 have birthdates indicating they are 105+ years old.
   
• Over 38,000 Californians appear to have more than one voter registration. 24,000 of them will be mailed two or more ballots under an all-mail scenario, because they have more than one active registration each.

Mailing hundreds of thousands of ballots to non-existent addressees opens the door to election crime. Mass "seeding" of unclaimed ballots, coupled with ballot "harvesting" by unscrupulous operatives, is a significant risk to the integrity of the November election. Mailing two or more ballots each to thousands of duplicated registrants allows-- even "invites" --voters to vote twice. California's SOS has already confirmed double voting in the March 3 primary by duplicated registrants who were mailed two ballots each.

"Federal law requires the state to maintain voter lists free of those who have died or relocated and to remove duplicated registrations," said EIPCa President Linda Paine. "This is especially critical under all-mail voting. Unless ineligible registrations are removed, hundreds of thousands of unclaimed ballots will likely go into circulation without chain of custody protections, due to state-sanctioned ballot harvesting. Defective laws and mismanaged voter rolls continue to risk the integrity of California's November election."

EIPCa's letter asks the SOS to work with the counties to investigate and remove all registrations found to be ineligible so they are not automatically mailed ballots.

SOURCE EIPCa