➡ Judicial Watch, a legal advocacy group, has filed a lawsuit against California to stop the state from counting ballots that arrive up to seven days after Election Day. They argue this practice is against federal law, which defines Election Day as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of every even-numbered year. The group believes this practice has led to changes in election outcomes, citing instances where late-arriving ballots led to the loss of two Republican congressional seats. Judicial Watch’s efforts are part of a larger push for election integrity and cleaner elections.
➡ Congressman Darryl Issa, with the support of Judicial Watch, is challenging the practice of counting ballots received after election day in California, Illinois, and Oregon. They argue that this violates federal law, which sets a specific election day, and could potentially encourage voter fraud. Judicial Watch has already seen success in similar lawsuits in Illinois and Mississippi. Their goal is to ensure fair and clean elections by only counting votes that arrive by election day.

Judicial Watch has sued the state of California on behalf of Congressman Darryl Issa to stop that state’s counting of ballots that arrive for up to seven days after Election Day, which as I’ve noted is absolutely contrary to the plain meaning and reading of federal law. With the Trump administration, and you know this is the second Trump administration, so we should be used to it now, but this has been extraordinary. All the activity that Trump is engaged in to try to reform the government. Congress is trying to follow his lead to a certain extent.

You know, but there are kind of all these issues that are continuing that need to be addressed, and Judicial Watch is best able to address them. And the number one issue in that regard is election integrity. I mean, in my view, Judicial Watch helped stop the steal in 2024, made it more difficult to steal the elections, or even to try to steal the elections as a result of our massive voter roll cleanups and our education of the American people about how the election processes had been corrupted in 2020. So the left at least had a, you know, they weren’t in a position, of course there were other others involved in this battle for cleaner elections.

They weren’t able to steal it. And our work on election integrity was a major contributing factor. The consequence was that we had a more honest and fair election. I’m convinced. And one of the ways we ensure honest and fair elections is through litigation. As we’ve talked about before, we’ve sued repeatedly in federal court to ensure that states and localities are taking the necessary steps under federal law to ensure that their voter registration lists are clean. Now, do they have to be perfectly clean? No, but they need to take reasonable steps to keep them clean.

And just over the last few years, and the numbers are increasing, even since it’s now well over four million names have been cleaned from the voter rolls, dirty names removed from the rolls, thanks to judicial watches, litigation, and legal actions. Another major issue that we’ve been pursuing is the, I think something that is a terrible, in terms of undermining confidence in how elections are run. This is a particularly egregious practice, also unlawful, which is the counting of ballots that arrive after election day. There are 18, 19 states, maybe the District of Columbia, depending on how you view the counting, that allow votes to be counted that arrive after election day.

Now, judicial watch sued in Illinois to stop that from happening. That case is on appeal, because they said, I think, the lower court and the appellate court, well, actually, we’re asking the Supreme Court to actually get the case back on track, said that a congressman doesn’t have the right to sue to make sure the election rules are being followed. I don’t understand that. And in Mississippi, we had a big case, and the appellate court, in that case, ruled, again, Mississippi allowed the counting of ballots that arrive up to five days after election day.

And the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that that’s unlawful. You can’t count ballots that arrive after election day. And in fact, I just saw that the full appellate court upheld that decision, which is another major victory for cleaner elections in our country, that have an entire appellate court, not just an appellate panel, but the full appellate court of the Fifth Circuit in an en banc fashion, it’s called, uphold this lower court decision. It’s a phenomenal victory. I haven’t read the decision yet. So go ahead and read the decision. I don’t know if we can even find it yet online, but I’ve been told it came down.

But you know, judicial watch, we just don’t stick to one or two states in terms of upholding the rule of law. I’m proud to announce that judicial watch has sued the state of California on behalf of Congressman Darrell Issa to stop that state’s counting of ballots that arrive for up to seven days after election day, which, as I’ve noted, is absolutely contrary to the plain meaning and reading of federal law. The lawsuit was filed this week in federal court in the district of, where was it? I’m not sure where the lawsuit was filed in California.

It’s filed to prevent state election officials, this is key, from extending election day for seven days beyond the date established by law. So when I say they count ballots for days of count ballots that arrive after election day, up to seven days after election day, that’s another way of saying they’re basically saying election day is extended a full week because the voting is still happening and coming in. As we say, judicial watch argues that the election law, the California election law, violates federal law, which defines election day, and this is what federal law says election day is, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of every even numbered year.

So that’s the congressional version of the law, and the presidential version, obviously, is every four years. As far as I’m concerned, I mean, we haven’t sued about this, I got my own little issue on this. I think it requires the counting of ballots on election day or by election day. You got to figure out who won on election day. And that was the big issue with 2020, wasn’t it? I mean, for the first time in history, we, the President Trump, we had an election decided, or the results changed as a result of post-election day counting.

President Trump had the votes to win on election night on 2020, and those results were changed by post-election day counting. And I think that’s invalid under this law, but that’s not an issue here, so I don’t want to distract you. Despite Congress’s unambiguous and longstanding statement regarding a single and uniform national election day, or a lawsuit says, California modified and extended election day by allowing seven additional days after election day for receipt of vote by mail ballots. And you will remember, surely, that the election wasn’t just extended seven days, but they couldn’t figure out who won, supposedly, for a full month plus after election day.

It made California into a national laughingstock. Indeed, Governor Gavin Newsom just said the other day, he’s got a new podcast out, although he’s out there talking, talking himself into some trouble, said it was, quote, right, unquote, to criticize the extended post-election day counting in California, which he called, quote, ridiculous, unquote. So I agree with Gavin Newsom. Not only is it ridiculous, though, I think, and Judicial Watch alleges for Darryl Issa, great congressman, because, you know, I don’t think congressmen want to do this. I give credit to Congressman Issa for wanting to do this.

They don’t like to sue. You might think they do, but they don’t. And one of the issues with the post, the kind of the extended election day deadlines in California, is that it changed results. It led to different results than were initially present on election day, specifically in several congressional races. And Republicans, as a result of this, in my view, shady counting of ballots for a month after the election, lost at least two seats. And I don’t understand why Speaker Johnson and Republicans in the House aren’t investigating those elections more directly, and raising the issues that I’m talking about here.

But all I know is we can only do what we do, right, which is sue. We allege the ballots arriving after election day, quote, change electoral outcomes in California. The change to the electoral outcomes has been publicly acknowledged by the Office of Secretary of State, which is the California Office of Referencing. Defendant Weber, who is the Secretary of State there, his predecessor issued a press release, advising the public to not rely on initial results from election night because late arriving, vote by mail, ballots and canvassing, canvassing meaning counting, may mean the outcomes of close contests may take days or weeks to settle.

So there you had the leading election official in the state of California. Saying, hey, look, we don’t know who won until these ballots that arrive after election day are counted. During the 2024 federal election, two of plaintiffs, and the plaintiff here is Darryl Issa, Republican colleagues in Congress lost their re-election campaigns. So these were incumbents that were turned out, which is kind of tough to do, even in unfriendly jurisdictions or congressional districts. Two of his Republican colleagues in Congress lost their re-election campaigns due to late arriving vote by mail ballots, ballots that arrived after election day.

Congressman Steele of the 45th congressional district and Congressman Duarte of the 13th congressional district in California were both leading in their respective races immediately after election day on November 5th, 2024, but ultimately lost re-election due to late arriving vote by mail ballots. Again, to bring it back, it can’t be counting ballots under federal law that arrive after election day. In fact, I played this quick video. It’s 30 seconds. It explains the case much more succinctly than I just did. Let’s play it. Hey, everyone. Judicial Watch has filed a major new federal lawsuit in California to stop that state’s counting of ballots that are received up to seven days after election day.

We filed the lawsuit on behalf of Congressman Darryl Issa, who’s from California. Federal law sets an election day, not an election week, not an election month. In fact, an appellate court and another Judicial Watch lawsuit ruled that counting ballots received after election day violates federal law. It undermines election integrity, undermines confidence in the people in the fair administration of the elections, and, of course, violates federal law. So Congressman Issa graciously gave thanks to Judicial Watch for our support. I’m grateful to have Judicial Watch’s support in this important lawsuit. California voters need all the help they can get to ensure fair elections.

That’s for sure. And as I noted, California is counting of ballots that arrive a full seven days after election day. It encourages voter fraud. Because you know, on election day, how many votes are needed to get your candidate over the top. And so you know how many votes you need to get in there, potentially unlawfully. Now, can you, do you have a system that completely curtails fraud? Of course not. But you also have systems that reasonably are set up to make sure that the worst type of fraud isn’t encouraged and made difficult to catch.

And plus, you follow the law. The law is there’s an election day. You can’t extend it for a week. So we have this election day lawsuit in Illinois. We have this election day lawsuit in Mississippi that led to this massive appellate victory, appeals court agreeing with Judicial Watch’s legal analysis. I mean, we were first out of the gate on this in terms of successful litigation. We are leading the way in ensuring that only votes that are counted are the ones that arrive by election day. And this is a major lawsuit in California. Everyone acknowledges California is a mess.

So we’ve got ongoing lawsuits in California, Illinois, and Oregon to clean up the voter rolls there. Supreme court fight on Illinois’ county ballots that arrive after election day. Mississippi fight, which we’ve largely won, on counting ballots that arrive after election day. And we just initiated a new lawsuit against California on counting ballots that arrive after election day. And it’s only March 14th. So there’s a lot more coming. There’s a lot more heavy lifting from Judicial Watch to ensure that your elections are fairer and cleaner and reflect the fact that America is not a third world country when it comes to elections.

Great stuff Judicial Watch is doing. And if you’re not supporting our work, you should be. If this isn’t reason to do so, I don’t know what would be. [tr:trw].

See more of Judicial Watch on their Public Channel and the MPN Judicial Watch channel.