Republican CA gubernatorial candidate says theres no evidence of fraud

After California held primary elections last week for governor, Congress and Los Angeles mayor, President Donald Trump quickly began questioning the results.

Two days after the primary, he posted on Truth Social: “Look what’s happening in California. The Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the vote.”

He doubled down in a “Meet the Press” interview that aired Sunday.

“They’re cheating on the election,” the president said.

When asked for evidence to support the claim, he responded, “All I have to do is look.”

Election officials in California say there is no significant fraud.

In an interview with NPR on Tuesday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Trump's claims of voter fraud are “truly embarrassing, unhinged, wild-eyed, dangerous, reckless, desperate. What's your evidence for the bold claim you've made? He has none.â€

It traditionally takes election workers days and sometimes weeks to count votes because about 80% of voters vote by mail, and ballots can be counted if they are received up to a week after the polls close, provided they are postmarked by Election Day.

Verifying and counting the ballots is cumbersome.

Every ballot envelope undergoes signature matching to separate them from the voter. They are physically processed to ensure they can be entered into the tally system. Additionally, ballots disproportionately came from Democrats who waited to decide how they would vote.

Republican Steve Hilton, who’s running for governor with the president’s endorsement, acknowledged that his team has not found evidence of rampant fraud.

“We’ve seen nothing that would give us cause to intervene in that way,†he said during a news conference Tuesday. “The real point is that this whole system needs to be improved.”

Elections expert Gauri Ramachandran sees a strategy behind President Trump’s baseless fraud claims, stating that this is a preview of what might happen in November if the administration doesn’t like the general election results.

She suggests that more funding for election administration would speed up the vote counts, saying, “You got to pay people overtime if you’re going to ask them to work on the weekend.”

Trump continues to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He’s never provided evidence, and his own attorney general at the time said there was no widespread fraud.

Dozens of recounts and court rulings also confirmed that he lost.