California’s Election Problems Keep Getting Worse

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

Jack Fowler:  So, Victor, let’s start out local. California election. This thing—no, there’s no state in America, and in fact, I’ve read there’s no country, non-first-world or first-world country, that counts votes like California does. 

And we saw the other day there was a dump of votes that came in one tranche, 10,000 votes exactly, for the mayoral race, and not a single one of those 10,000 votes went to Spencer Pratt. They were divided amongst the two Democrats, Karen Bass and, I’m sorry, I can’t remember the lady who’s probably gonna prevail. [Nithya Raman] 

And then, as the votes keep getting counted, [Spencer] Pratt’s second-place status keeps diminishing. We’re watching thievery live. Victor, your thoughts? 

Victor Davis Hanson: Well, the betting platforms have all said that Raman is gonna win, not because they had any great insight from polling. They just assumed that left-wing Los Angeles would not allow him to win. 

The theft or the alleged theft or the irregularities are not actually in the counting. They’re in the mail-in ballots. And in California, almost any time you come in contact with a state agency, you’re going to… And all you have to do is say yes, and you will get an automatic mail-in ballot, and there is no ID. 

There’s no way to determine whether you’re… You can use different names, and that happens all the time. So when you start to see things, that these ballots are coming in and not just he’s getting less than half what she is or a quarter what she is.  

But what’s even more interesting is Bass was way ahead of her. Of course, she was in third. 

And yet, in some of these tranches that come in, she’s ahead of Bass. And that, I know they say they’re younger voters, but what it suggests to me is if people thought that they needed ballots for her because Bass had already clinched it, then maybe people were “voting” en masse for her, voting in quotes. 

But the other thing about it is it’s only going to cement the reputation of California that it’s a third-world dysfunctional state, even if it was not crooked, that you take this long.  

And here in the Central Valley, I can think of three races, and it’s kind of so cynical of Republicans in purple districts. 

And they have won on Election Day, clearly. And then they’ve even had victory celebrations. And then it starts just like this. You start to see the mail-in ballots and then trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle. And the portions have nothing to do with the proportions that were counted before. 

So if a Republican is 52-48 across mail-in early that have all been counted on Election Day, it doesn’t matter. The asymmetries will grow. And the suspicion is always, with Democratic candidates, wait till the California Teachers Association and the SEIU votes come in and all of the dubious votes from people who may not be legal residents but got mail ballots at their residencies. 

And the Democratic Party then calls it racism if you want a voter ID or anything like that. No one in Europe does this. No one in the United States does this, allows the mail-in ballots to come in way after Election Day.  

And what can you say? It’s designed for fraud. It’s designed for the Democratic Party. 

It’s designed for mass registration-voting by people who otherwise would have no intention of voting and may not exist because… As I said before, when my son was living here while he was finishing his college at a local college, then he moved out and bought a home. But for three years, I kept getting his ballot. 

Maybe it was four years. Even though he was registered, and he didn’t know it, I didn’t know it. It just kept coming, and I just threw it away every year. And I left a message at the registrar’s once. I phoned in. It was like, “Put you on hold.” I just left a message. They don’t care. 

But it would have been very evil for me to sign his name and maybe say, instead of William Hanson, say something like his middle name, Frank Hanson, W. 

Frank Hanson or something. So it’s really discouraging and just says that, in addition to the wildfires, in addition to the high-speed rail, which, by the way, now they’re talking another 81 billion just to get the first phase done. And in addition to— 

Jack Fowler: Excuse me, an additional 81 billion? 

Victor Davis Hanson: Well, that’s the cost of it to get the whole thing up and running. That’s with the cars and the tracks. 

Jack Fowler: Right. 

Victor Davis Hanson:  And then… and I don’t even know if that includes the Merced over to Palo Alto. I don’t think it does. That’s gonna be a horrendous cost going through the Pacheco Pass, and it’s not gonna happen. 

Anyway, in addition to the water that… I mean, here we had a pretty good water year and the reservoirs are not full because [Gov. Gavin] Newsom released water out to the Gulf.  

We’ve talked about the indigenous takeover of water supplies up in Northern California in the wine country. We’ve talked about Newsom blowing up four dams on the Klamath River while using money from a fund that was earmarked by the voters to create them and build them, which we never did. 

We never built three great reservoirs that the voters voted for, Temperance Flat, Los Banos Grandes, and the Sites Reservoir.  

And then you have… In addition to that, we have the worst infrastructure. Reason Magazine, Jack, has a great survey that’s out of all the transportation systems, but mostly highways in the United States by state. 

And they rank them according to not just fatalities, but miles driven, accidents, polls of what people think, maintenance, whether they have guard… And guess what state is 49th? California. Forty-ninth. 

And that’s with the highest gas taxes, the highest income taxes, and among the highest property taxes because of our assessed evaluation, actual taxes, and again, sales tax because of the add-ons on the counties. 

And so you get almost nothing with 21% below the poverty line, and then all this legislation that’s coming down the line about a billionaire tax, which will morph very quickly into a millionaire’s tax, I think. 

So there… It’s a dysfunctional state, and then you hear about the election, and everybody you talked to said, “Pratt and Hilton can’t win.” 

And you’d say, “Why? Why? Why? Why? Everybody’s sick of what’s going on.” 

Yes, but they won’t let it happen. The balloting is just so corrupt, and they’re not gonna fix it. There’s a proposition coming up in November, I think, to have voter ID, and I think it’ll pass, but it’ll be thrown out by a federal—California federal judge. 

I bet you five bucks it will. Just like rejecting gay marriage, and two days later, a gay judge, a federal judge, ruled that unconstitutional. 

And so it just depresses people, and it’s already… What I don’t understand about the exodus is that after you’ve drained the state of 12 million middle-class and professional classes, you would think that the yearly exodus would go down, but it’s not. 

It’s going up. It’s up to 300,000 to 400,000 expected this year, 50,000 to 60,000 from L.A. city itself. That’s gonna really balloon. 

I don’t know. I just had a friend that called me. I do business with him. He’s been a longtime California native, and he said, “I’m leaving.” 

I said, “What do you mean you’re leaving?” 

He said, “I’m leaving.” 

I said, “Well, where are you gonna buy a house?” 

“I bought a house. I’ve already bought. It’s just a matter of selling my house. And believe me, my house has much more than my California house, and it’s cheaper, and the taxes and gas and everything is just incredible where I’m…” The state that he’s going to. 

And so it’s sad because this state was not only—with its thousand-mile coastline and Sierra Nevada and Mojave Desert—everything is here, and it’s the most naturally abundant state. 

It’s number five with gas and oil reserves. It’s got precious rare earth minerals in the desert. 

It was the third-largest timber state. It has huge timber potential. Of course, we shut that down, and then we let 60 million trees burn in the last three fires. Sixty million trees that could have been harvested. 

We had a big mining, as I said, mining industry. 

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.