Fact-checking Trump’s claims about mail-in voting in California

A majority of Americans support allowing anyone to cast a ballot by mail, according to a Pew survey in August, which also showed strong support for requiring government-issued identification at the polls. Voters in Maine this week rejected a measure that would have created stricter voter ID laws.

Asked by PBS News whether the administration has any evidence for the allegations, the White House provided a list of statements that it says support the president’s concerns about fraudulent voting. But much of what the White House has pointed to as evidence of these claims does not prove widespread voter fraud.

Here’s a closer look at each point the White House shared with additional context provided by PBS News.

“CA does not use voter ID.”

It is true that California does not require voter ID to cast a ballot. However, the state requires a current and valid driver’s license number, state ID number or the last four digits of a person’s Social Security number to register to vote.

“CA uses global mail in ballots which we know is vulnerable to fraud and abuse.”

California is one of eight states, plus Washington, D.C., that mail ballots to all active registered voters. More broadly, 28 states allow “no excuse” absentee voting by mail.

The White House cited the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission, which in 2005 found that “[a]Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.[v]Sending a letter through the mail is likely to increase the risk of fraud. The Carter-Baker Commission Report is often cited in this line about absentee ballots and mail-in ballots. But the late former President Jimmy Carter issued a statement in October 2021 expressing disappointment in how the report was “selectively referenced,” and noted that “mail-in voting practices have advanced significantly” since the report was originally published.

Election officials across the country have a number of procedures in place to verify mail-in ballots and protect them from tampering.

Overall, several government and independent analyzes have found that voter fraud is rare, including by mail.

PBS News correspondent Liz Landers asked White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt on November 4 about the evidence behind the president’s claims of voter fraud in California..

“CA mailed nearly 10 million ballots that were never returned in the 2024 election, demonstrating the potential for fraud and abuse.”

The White House pointed to the Election Administration and Voting Survey from 2024, which shows that California sent out 23,003,434 mail-in ballots in 2024; 13,185,566 returned.

Mail-in ballots that are not returned are not counted as votes.

Mail-in ballots require a signature that must match the signature on file with the elections office. According to the California Secretary of State: “California Election Code Section 3017(c) requires county election officials to establish procedures to track and confirm receipt of mail-in ballots and to make that information available via an online access system using the county elections department’s website or via a toll-free telephone number.”

“San Francisco allows non-citizens to vote in local elections creating a significant risk of fraud in federal elections (federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections).”

San Francisco, like some other municipalities across the country, allows non-citizens to vote in select local elections — in this case, Board of Education elections. The city expressly prohibits people who are not citizens from voting in “any other local, state or federal elections.” Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in any federal elections.

“The Department of Justice recently filed a lawsuit against an elections official in Orange County, California for access to information on noncitizens on the county’s voter rolls after it was revealed that 17 noncitizens had registered to vote there.”

The 10-page lawsuit, filed by the Justice Department in June, does not allege that any noncitizens voted in Orange County, only that they were registered. The Justice Department recently sued other states, including Pennsylvania, to obtain information about their voter rolls.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page, a defendant in the lawsuit, told PBS News Hour in an emailed statement on Wednesday: “I am not aware of any specific voter fraud committed during the 2025 statewide special election. However, if suspected fraudulent activity is previously identified… [Orange County registrar of voters] employees or I am notified by a third party, I will forward it to the Orange County District Attorney or California Secretary of State for their investigation. Page also said that there were no voting disruptions in Orange County during this election, and that there are no municipalities in the county that allow non-citizens to vote.

“A lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice against the State of California and Secretary of State Shirley Weber noted:

• California reported 2,178,551 duplicate registrations in the 2024 election cycle — 15.6% of all registered voters — and seven counties completely failed to submit data on duplicate registrations.
• California removed only 378,349 registered voters due to death (11.9%), well below the national average.

California was one of six states that the Department of Justice sued last September over its voter data.

The state’s introduction of duplicate voter registrations into the Department of Elections and Voting Survey starting in 2024 indicates that some of the state’s counties are “unable to distinguish between new, duplicate or updated online registrations.”

Seventy-three percent of the registration transactions processed by the state were for valid new registrations or updates to existing registrations, according to EAVS data.

The report does not provide a national average for deaths.

Trump’s claims about illegal voting date back to 2016, when he claimed without evidence that he won the popular vote if people who voted “illegally” were not counted. During Trump’s first administration, he formed a voter fraud commission headed by then-Vice President Mike Pence to investigate alleged voter fraud in the 2016 election, including requesting detailed voter information from states, such as dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. The commission was eventually dissolved in 2018 without any major findings of fraud.

California’s Secretary of State responded to the DOJ’s lawsuit by saying, “State law is clear – California has a legal obligation to protect the sensitive private information of our constituents. The US Department of Justice has rejected our invitation to view data in the manner required by federal laws that would protect California citizens’ private and personal data from misuse. They have failed to provide sufficient legal authority to justify their intrusive demands, and this lawsuit constitutes an unprecedented intrusion that is not supported by law or any prior practice or policy of the US Department of Justice.”

VoteCal, the state’s central voter database, says it regularly scans its list on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, including against “death records from the California Department of Public Health, change of address (COA) from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and national change of address (NCOA) from the Employment Development Department (EDD) and the California Department of Corrections and Offender Rehabilitation.”

“A California woman faced criminal charges for registering her dog to vote and casting multiple ballots.”

The Orange County District Attorney has charged a Costa Mesa woman with five felonies after she illegally registered her dog to vote. She cast dog ballots in the 2021 and 2022 elections in Orange County. The dog’s vote was successfully counted in the 2021 gubernatorial recall election, which voters opposed by a margin of 3 million. The dog’s ballot was rejected for the 2022 primary. The woman reported herself to the Orange County Registrar of Voters’ office in 2024 and was charged in September 2025.

Californians passed Proposition 50, the Associated Press determined, after 75% of the votes were counted. Current vote counts show the measure winning by a margin of nearly 2.3 million votes.