California Gov. candidate Larry Elder’s campaign began Monday to spread allegations of election fraud, a day before the election was withdrawn and even before election results were released.
Elder’s campaign shared a form on its website that appeared to assume that Newsom remained in its seat, alleging that it did so through election fraud. The California withdrawal election will begin on Tuesday, September 14, although email voting has already begun and early voting has already taken place in early September.
“They say there are four freedom boxes in America. The soap box, the urn, the jury box, and the ammunition box,” the form said. “When we vote, we exercise our rights as Californians and as Americans to make our voices heard through the polls, after we have heard others make their voices heard through the tray. We trust our officials elected to safeguard this ballot box, so its results will truly reflect our will as a Californian. “
“However, when these officials, whether out of laziness or incompetence, allow thieves to steal in the middle of the night and cheat our ballot boxes, we can no longer trust their contents,” he added.
The website where the unfounded preventive claims were made was paid for by Elder’s campaign.
The form asked voters to sign a petition to request a special session of the California legislature to “investigate and improve the twisted results” of the election. Election results have yet to be announced before voters go to the polls on Tuesday.
The petition stated that “statistical analyzes used to detect fraud in elections held in third world countries” detected fraud in the California withdrawal election, yet to be determined.
The FiveThirtyEight voting website currently shows that almost 58% of voters are in favor of keeping Newsom as governor, while around 42% say he should be removed. For Newsom to be removed from office, more than 50% of voters must vote “No” to keep him as governor.
As NBC News noted, Elder has declined to say whether or not he will recognize the results of the withdrawal election.
“We are working together to find out whether or not tomorrow’s election is a fair election,” he said during a press conference on Monday.