If you’re talking about voter fraud, you aren’t talking about inflation, gas prices, overly-aggressive federal law enforcement, government corruption, or that this presidential administration has been secretly dropping bombs in Iran, which they were hoping to keep a secret until after you already voted in the midterms.
You also aren’t talking about whatever other batshit crazy bullshit Trumpelthinskin and his mayhem minions have sown in Washington, D.C., and beyond.
Voter fraud is rampant, the administration keeps saying over and over again.
So, does what the Department of Justice has done recently make it true? It sued the state of California to hand over confidential voter information. It alleged the existence of thousands of “likely alien voters” across the state, and it’s even charged some folks with voter fraud for registering to vote and/or actually voting in elections.
All the courts on the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States sent the DOJ’s lawsuit packing—and so did that highest court in the land supposedly packed to be Trump’s last line of defense.
Still, the DOJ sent all 58 counties in California individual requests for confidential voter information—including 180 in Santa Barbara County and 63 in San Luis Obispo County.
While outgoing Santa Barbara County Clerk, Recorder, Assessor, and Registrar of Voters Joseph E. Holland (that’s a long title) has kept his office characteristically quiet about the whole affair, SLO County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano said there ain’t no way, no how she’s going to comply with the DOJ’s demand letter. That letter also asks that the ballots of the alleged “illegal voters” in question be segregated from all the rest!
“We take allegations of improper voter registration seriously and will always cooperate with lawful investigations conducted through appropriate channels,” Cano said. “But cooperation does not mean setting aside the laws we are sworn to uphold.”
You know, that whole don’t mess with voter rolls in the 90 days before an election thing.
Santa Barbara County District Attorney John Savrnoch said his office won’t be conducting independent investigations of the folks on the list and that he trusts the local elections office to do its job right.
Don’t worry, though, SLO County DA Dan Dow is on the case! He’s filed one case against some poor sap who is alleged to have registered to vote in 2016 while not being a citizen and possibly voted in 2021. Supposedly, Dow’s office is looking at potentially filing charges in 16 other cases.
I guess we’ll see what happens. The DOJ announced that it has filed voter fraud related charges against 239 people across the United States since Trump took office the second time—the vast majority of those people are here legally, and some are even citizens now. I haven’t seen any conviction announcements yet, though.
Just for perspective, more than 150 million people voted in the 2024 presidential election. It would have been shocking if the DOJ hadn’t found a single soul to file voter fraud charges against.
Not all of the noncitizens even knew they were registered to vote, and many haven’t even voted in a single election.
It’s not a vast conspiracy or proof of rampant voter fraud.
The Canary knows humans aren’t perfect and neither are the systems they develop. Send proof of a conspiracy to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in November 5 – November 12, 2026.
