Fact Check Is California Registering Non-citizens To Vote?

Did a legal settlement between Judicial Watch and California election officials prove that one million illegal votes were cast in the 2018 elections in California? No, that's not true: The settlement agreement in Judicial Watch's latest California voter registration case did not confirm ane 1000000 illegal votes were cast and Judicial Sentinel never claimed it did. California'due south Secretary of State Alex Padilla slapped downwardly similar allegations dating back to the 2016 election, calling them "corrosive lies." A Judicial Watch spokeswoman distanced the conservative group from the meme that made the debunked claim.

The claim was made in a Facebook mail (archived here) that was published past Kathie Walters, who describes herself as a pastor, writer and speaker, on Apr 8, 2020. It read:

Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch just WON a case confronting California proving 1 Million illegal votes were cast in the 2018 Election"

This is what the post looked similar on Facebook at the time of writing:

Walters' post got more 28,000 shares and enough of followers weighed in with praise. "Yay! Praise The Lord," wrote 1 person. " It seems like we are in a snowball issue. I think then much will first coming out, it will make our head spin, " said another. " Well, if zippo else, this lock-downward has the attending to getting things cleaned upward," wrote a third.

But there were also some who raised questions and challenged the claim. "Kathie Walters tin can you lot mail service the commodity about the 1 million illegal votes?" asked i person. [Walters' response: "await on google."] "Where is this verified? I can't find it online anywhere," said another. "You know this is a prevarication, right? Of grade you exercise. And here I thought Christians were supposed to be beacons of righteousness. Instead, they seem to enjoy spreading lies," added a third.

A close look at the Judicial Watch website doesn't offering any textile boasting of a contempo win that proved there were 1 million illegal votes in 2018. On a page dedicated to "illegal voting," the last news release to touch on the topic was from Jan 27, 2017. It was titled, "Judicial Watch: Fitton Weighs in on Illegal Conflicting Voting," and referenced a Breitbart article in which Fitton "weighs in on the burgeoning debate over whether illegal aliens voted in the 2016 presidential ballot."

Included in the release and article were these comments from Fitton:

Are we supposed to be so naive every bit to think that tens of millions of people are here, present in the United States, and none of them are illegally voting? In states where y'all don't have voter ID, in states where virtually voter registration, you're non required to certify citizenship, other than signing and saying you're a denizen? ...

So yous have many non-citizens voting in elections, and they vote in large numbers in a manner to sway elections."

Non included in the article or news release was any proof; Fitton'southward statements were speculation.

So, Atomic number 82 Stories reached out to the group directly, giving the spokeswoman, Jill Farrell, repeated opportunities to either confirm or deny the claim circulating on social media. She passed along a couple of links (only i related to California) that did not reply the enquiry.

The simply argument she offered by electronic mail was this:

JW should not/cannot be held responsible for the posts of unafilliated individuals."

For transparency, below are our attempts to get answers to the question through the spokeswoman.

"It seems similar a fair request to only enquire if what she's saying is true or not," we wrote in one message.

After that got no response, we tried once more:

If what she's saying is true, I'd retrieve you'd want people to know about this and I'd be happy to share the truth. But if what she'south saying is not true, I'd recall you'd as well be interested in setting the record directly. And then I guess I'm just really confused -- and a bit disappointed most any reluctance to help."

That note, too, was ignored.

The one link Farrell provided in the outset of the email substitution was a news release from June 19, 2019, titled, "California Begins Massive Voter Roll Clean-Upward -- Notifies Up to 1.v Meg 'Inactive' Voters equally Role of Judicial Lookout Lawsuit Settlement." The release started this mode:

Judicial Sentry announced today that it has been informed that Los Angeles County has sent notices to as many as ane.5 million inactive voters on its voter rolls. This mailing is a step toward removing the names of voters who have moved, died, or are otherwise ineligible to vote. The massive mailing is the issue of a settlement agreement with Judicial Sentinel requiring the canton to remove as many equally one.5 million inactive registrations. In addition, the California secretarial assistant of country has alerted other California counties to clean up their voter registration lists to comply with the federal National Voter Registration Deed (NVRA), equally the secretarial assistant promised to do in that aforementioned settlement understanding."

Nowhere in this release virtually cleaning up inactive voter registrations is in that location mention that 1 one thousand thousand illegal votes had, in fact, been cast.

RealClearPolitics published a story the day afterward the press release went out from Judicial Lookout man. The story, "Calif. Begins Removing 5 Million Inactive Voters on Its Rolls," began this way:

Los Angeles County has started the procedure of removing from its registration rolls an estimated one.5 one thousand thousand inactive voters who have moved, died or become ineligible to bandage a ballot, an attempt to comply with federal ballot police and a court settlement with Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog."

The June 20, 2019, article makes mention of a Los Angeles Times investigation uncovering glitches in a new system assuasive people to automtacially register to vote while at the Calfornia Department of Motor Vehicles. The RealClearPolitics article summarized the findings this way, proverb the arrangement was:

responsible for upwards of 100,000 inaccurate voter-registration records, including wrong party preferences, voters incorrectly being designated every bit wanting to vote by mail and at least 1,500 noncitizens wrongly allowed to annals to vote."

Whether the more i,500 noncitizens who were immune to register to vote actually voted is unknown. Only fifty-fifty if they did, ane,500 is a far cry from the i million claimed in the Facebook post.

Lead Stories reached out the California secretary of state's office to encounter if it could offering clarification on this matter. We did not hear back before publication, merely nosotros will update the story when we exercise.

We did notice a news release from Secretary of State Alex Padilla that was dated January 24, 2017, days after Trump stepped into office. It was issued in response to ongoing claims past Trump that California had purposefully engaged in voter fraud.

Here are Trump's tweets virtually the issue on consecutive days in Nov 2016:

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally
-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California - so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias - large trouble!
-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2016

Here's what Padilla said a couple months later, in response to Trump's repeated claims:

By repeating fake and unsubstantiated voter fraud allegations as the cause for losing the popular vote, President Trump is dangerously attacking the legitimacy of costless and fair elections and taking a jackhammer to the foundation of our democracy. These are not "alternative facts." They are corrosive lies without any evidence. Even leaders in the President'due south ain party hold there is no show to support his claims since they were irresponsibly made back in November. Rather than continue to deliberately deceive the American people virtually his near 3 million popular vote loss, the President should focus on addressing the substantiated threats reported by our intelligence community."

Other fact-checking outlets take debunked Trump's revisited allegations about massive voter fraud, including FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.

In fact, in a courtroom filing, Trump's own attorneys seemed to rebut the idea that at that place was whatever voter fraud in 2016. The Washington Post reported on January 25, 2017, that:

On Wednesday, hours afterwards President Trump tweeted his intention to launch an investigation into the integrity of the voting arrangement, Fox reporter John Roberts had a question for White House press secretarial assistant Sean Spicer: how could the president be so sure massive fraud was likely to have occurred in the last ballot -- when, just weeks ago, his lawyers had argued the verbal opposite?

Spicer'due south answer echoed a theory his boss has also floated: that "a lot of these issues could accept occurred in bigger states" such equally California and New York. Simply that line all the same seems to run counter to the blanket claims in at least some of the filings by Trump'south legal team."