As Californians voted on a new congressional map on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump falsely said the process was rigged.
“California’s unconstitutional redistricting vote is a colossal fraud in that the entire process, especially the vote itself, is rigged,” President Trump said on his platform Truth Social.
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“All ‘mail-in’ ballots from which Republicans are ‘locked out’ in that state are subject to extremely stringent legal and criminal scrutiny. Attention!”
A reporter asked White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt for President Trump’s evidence that the election was fraudulent.
“That’s just a fact,” Levitt said. “They have a universal vote-by-mail system in place, but we know this is ripe for fraud… Fraudulent ballots are being mailed out in other people’s names and in the names of illegal aliens who should not be voting in American elections.”
Democratic state officials in California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, disputed Mr. Trump’s claims. “Where in the world is this fraud? The ramblings don’t match the facts,” Weber said.
When PolitiFact contacted the White House, a spokesperson responded with several points, many of which were also shared in the X post. These points criticized California’s voting system, but included only one case of a person charged with voter fraud. The White House also misrepresented numbers on voter registration and voter removals to support its claims.
Trump has repeatedly spread falsehoods about a “fraudulent” election, including in California. Rigging a state election would require election officials in the state to work together to commit a felony. There’s no evidence that that happened.
What happened: The largely Democratic voting state overwhelmingly approved a proposal to redistrict Congressional districts to improve the chances of adding five Democratic seats to the U.S. House of Representatives, overriding a similar redistricting in Texas aimed at increasing Republican seats.
White House evidence does not prove election was fraudulent
Mail-in voting system: Much of the White House’s evidence criticizes California’s system of mailing ballots to all valid registered voters. It is one of eight states that conduct elections using such a system. As the White House has pointed out, millions of ballots have been sent to Californians but have not been returned, but that does not prove fraud. Election officials verify a voter’s identity by checking the signature on the mail-in ballot envelope against registration records.
Voters will receive a ballot by mail, but they can choose to vote in person instead. Voters generally do not need to provide ID. If you are a first-time voter and you did not provide ID when you registered to vote, election officials can ask for your ID.
The White House cherry-picked a line from a 2005 bipartisan report: “Absentee voting remains the largest source of potential voter fraud.” Although the report generally conveyed a bleak view of absentee voting, it did not call for its abolishment. Recommended ways to improve security and further research.
Non-citizen voters: The White House acknowledged that non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections, stating, “The City of San Francisco allows non-citizens to vote in local elections, but this poses a high risk of fraud in federal elections.” The city only allows non-citizens to vote in school board elections.
In June, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Orange County, California, alleging that the city redacted personally identifying information when it provided records of 17 noncitizens on its voter rolls to the Justice Department.
Seventeen people self-reported wanting to cancel their voter registration, including eight who voted before canceling their voter registration, said Bob Page, the county’s registrar of voters.
Duplicate registrations: “California reported 2,178,551 duplicate registrations during the 2024 election cycle, representing 15.6 percent of all registered voters,” the White House said.
This statement gives the misleading impression that these people appear multiple times on the voter rolls. “Duplicate Registration” refers to the number of registration applications that the California Department of Elections receives but does not process because they are identical to an existing registration. Duplicate registrations can occur by chance. Some people register and then forget, or they submit their registration both by mail and online.
The numbers cited by the White House represent the number of times California election officials realized they had made a mistake, rather than making one.
The numbers come from the nonpartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s 2024 National Survey of Voting Activities and Election Administration from 2022 to 2024.
The national average for duplicate applications is 12.7%.
Voter removals after death: The White House said that between the 2022 and 2024 elections, “California removed only 378,349 (11.9%) registered voters due to death, significantly below the national average.”
This number is carefully selected. The White House cited voters removed for death, but that is just one reason for removing them from the voter rolls.
According to the same election study, California removed more than 3.177 million voters from its rolls from 2022 to 2024 for all reasons, including death. This compares to a 12.4% removal rate among registered voters overall, compared to a national average of 9.1%.
California excluded most voters for reasons other than death, such as moving or not returning a verification letter.
Voter fraud: The White House cited one woman who has been charged with voter fraud.
In September, authorities charged a Costa Mesa, California, woman with five felonies for illegally registering her dog to vote. This dog vote was counted in the 2021 gubernatorial recall election, but was rejected in the 2022 primary. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement that the woman “self-reported that she registered her dog to vote.”
Laura Lee Yurex, 62, said she wanted to prove her claims about flaws in the state’s voting system, her attorney said.
The conservative Heritage Foundation’s voter fraud database records 69 cases of fraud in California from 1982 to 2025. The database shows dozens of cases in states that vote primarily Republican, such as Florida, which did not send mail-in ballots to all voters.
our verdict
President Trump said California’s votes were “rigged.”
The White House briefing misrepresented data on duplicate registrations and selective data on deceased voters removed from registration rolls, pointed to one woman charged with voter fraud among nearly 23 million registered voters, and baselessly criticized San Francisco’s allowance of noncitizen voting in school board elections.
The White House did not prove California’s vote was “fraudulent.” We rate Trump’s statement false.
Caryn Baird contributed to this fact check.
