The election process in California is being conducted in a way that is not leaving fate in the hands of voters, according to a lawmaker.
“Instead, people are trying to influence voting patterns and voting decisions in a way that is frankly inconsistent with the norms of a democratic society,” said Assemblyman Kevin Kiley (R-Roseville).
Kiley tweeted about the trend on Twitter on October 11, stating: “When the Attorney General commits fraud writing the Propositions, the Secretary of State gets caught giving $35 million to a partisan firm for "voter education," and the Governor ties COVID lockdowns to past voter turnout - Californians wonder about free and fair elections.”
He added that constituents have been complaining about Attorney General Becerra, Secretary of State Padilla and Gov. Gavin Newsom using control over the election process to try to perpetuate their power.
“All of these things that people in power are doing serve to undermine public confidence in the fairness of our election process,” Kiley told the Southern California Record.
Regarding the Attorney General writing propositions, Kiley said Becerra has a history of using language on ballot measures in a very slanted and skewed way.
“He doesn't actually give the voter accurate information about the proposition but instead nudges them towards the way he wants them to vote,” said Kiley.
As for Secretary of State Padilla being caught granting $35 million to a partisan firm for voter education, Kiley say the contract has been cancelled, so far.
“This is a contract that the secretary of state did for voter outreach but he actually awarded it to a firm that is working for the Biden campaign,” Kiley said. “The state's controller determined that he didn't have the authority under the budget to enter into that contract so, for now, it's been nullified.”
Finally, Kiley said Gov. Newsom has no authority to rank counties based on factors such as past voter turnout
“Voter turnout has nothing to do with COVID-19 or public health or anything like that,” he said. “You're punishing counties potentially based upon whether there's a higher rate of COVID-19 in areas that rank lower on this socioeconomic index. One of the factors for that is low voter turnout.”
The ranking is part of a new equity metric, which took effect on Oct. 6, requiring more intensive efforts to prevent and manage the spread of the coronavirus among Californians who have been impacted, according to a press release.
“It’s another requirement for counties to move to a higher re-opening tier and what that essentially requires is that the prevalence of COVID-19 be fairly similar in different parts of the County and the way that the equity metric slices up the County for that purpose is using what's called this healthy places index, which includes 25 factors that are supposed to measure whether a particular census tract within the County is socio-economically advantaged or disadvantaged,” Kiley said. “But some of those factors are kind of strange. Voter turnout is one of them.”