Matt Cohen, Senior Reporter

In the wake of California’s notoriously slow vote-counting process, Trump and his MAGA faithful are deploying a familiar playbook: Screaming voter fraud without a shred of evidence. The conspiracy theories started well before polls closed last Tuesday and, in the week since, the cries of a rigged election have only grown louder — particularly in Los Angeles, where GOP mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt did not receive enough votes to advance to the November general election under the state’s jungle primary. 

In a deep blue city like L.A., where only 18% of registered voters are Republicans, Pratt stood little chance to advance to the general election. Yet MAGA voters seem to think it’s wholly unbelievable that late-reporting batches of mail-in ballots dropped him out of the top two spots.

• “Look what’s happening in California, the Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the Vote,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week. “I hope the Republicans are watching so that they can finally pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!”
  
  
• Trump later doubled down on his election fraud claims in a disastrous interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker. When Welker pushed back on Trump’s false claims that the election was rigged, the president stormed out.
  
  
• On Monday, he posted on Truth Social that it was “not possible” for Pratt to have lost the election. (Narrator: It was). Many other influential MAGA voices are echoing Trump’s rhetoric.
  
  
• Vance soon followed Trump’s lead and told Fox News that the California election “seems pretty shady to me.”
  
  
• “They want you to believe this happened in the LA Mayors race… 3rd place jumps to 1st in *every* ballot drop *after* Election Day,” conservative influencer Benny Johnson posted on X. “Defies all mathematical probability, the law of averages and has never happened in US election history.”
  
  
• Anti-voting activist Seth Keshel had a blunt message for anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the false claims of election fraud: “If your defense of California’s election malfeasance is ‘because the media and government say so’ - you don’t deserve to live in this country,” he wrote.
  
  
• Of course, election-denier Cleta Mitchell also got in on the conspiracy theories, blasting voter lists in the Golden State and telling Steve Bannon she’s supposedly heard of people in California getting “15 ballots” sent to their homes.
  
  
• If you think the disinformation is bad now, how will things be in a few months as voters head to the ballot box for the midterms, where House of Representatives seats will be at stake? Don’t worry, we’ll keep you covered.
  
  
• The latest on California election conspiracy theories >>>

Georgia election board hears pitch from anti-voting activist on dodgy voter fraud tool

The Georgia State Election Board (SEB) is no stranger to controversy. Ever since MAGA activists took control of the board in the aftermath of the 2020 election, it’s been promoting election conspiracies and pushing anti-voting policies in the Peach State. The board’s latest saga? Possibly partnering up with a right-wing activist to promote a controversial new program for hunting voter fraud that could lead to registered voters being flagged for removal.

• Rick Richards, who created EagleAI with the backing of the Election Integrity Network — founded by Mitchell — pitched his new project, ELLY, to the SEB last week.
  
  
• Richards described it as an open-source program that ordinary citizens can use to identify ineligible voters at the county level by cross-referencing voter registration data with aggregated public records. But voting advocates say it uses unreliable data that can lead to eligible voters being wrongly removed from the rolls.
  
  
• Advocates said the use of ELLY and other programs, especially promoted by Richards, should ring “alarm bells.”
  
  
• Richards pitched ELLY as an alternative to ERIC, the nonpartisan data-sharing network that’s considered the gold standard in helping states maintain accurate voter records. Red states began pulling out of ERIC after a cascade of right-wing conspiracies, but Georgia is one of 27 states and Washington, D.C. that still maintain membership.
  
  
• Janice Johnston, the board’s most MAGA member, was quite eager to partner up with Richards for a “pilot project… to use ELLY in 5-10 counties,” but chairman John Fervier shot down the proposal.
  
  
• Johnston announced later in SEB’s meeting that she’s stepping down from the board — but not before she made Fervier promise that the board would revisit Richards’ ELLY proposal at the next meeting in July.
  
  
• What’s the dodgy voter fraud tool? >>>