California's Suspicious Voter Registration Data

According to data from the California Secretary of State, Lake County, which encompasses Clear Lake and parts of the Mendocino National Forest, had 8,024 eligible voters in 2008.

But according to U.S. Census data, Lake County’s voting eligible population—those citizens over 18 years of age—is over six times that.

While that potential error could simply be a typo, there are plenty of other anomalous data in the California voter registration datasets to be suspicious of.

In particular, between June of 2021 and January of 2022, the voting eligible population of the state somehow grew by over 1.8 million according to the Secretary of State data.

This was at a time when populous states like California were hemorrhaging residents in the wake of the pandemic. According to the U.S. Census, the 2021 population of California was practically the same as that of 2019 despite previously increasing year over year, and in 2021 California would lose a Congressional seat for the first time in history as a result.

Counties With Large Jumps In Eligible Voters

That random growth in the voting age population appears across numerous, but not all, counties; it didn’t affect San Francisco County and a few others. It appears most prominently in Los Angeles County, which grew by 568,679 people within a year.

Smaller counties like Lassen and Trinity saw the largest change as a percentage of their prior population—25 percent and 18 percent respectively. A small county like Lassen went from 17,000 voting age citizens to over 21,000 in a year—which would be an improbable influx.

Improbable Registration Rates

Another potentially related anomaly is that a number of counties have seemingly improbable registration rates—the number of registered voters per eligible voter.

Besides Lake County—which had an effective registration rate of over 400 percent—there is Alpine County.

Alpine County is California’s smallest county with only around 1,000 eligible voters. Yet 100 percent of those potential voters in 2021 were registered.

Lassen and Almador counties had registration rates over 99 percent. Nevada and Marin counties had rates over 98 percent.

While it’s possible that a small county could have a high registration rate, usually the numbers are much lower than that. In comparison, the U.S. Census recently noted that the recent midterm vote had the highest nationwide registration rate since 2000—69.1 percent.

But California appears to have registration rates far above that national average. In the California Secretary of State data, there are 23 counties with voter registration rates over 90 percent at some point in the last two decades. And that includes the most populous county: Los Angeles.

Los Angeles’ registration rate reached an improbable 95 percent in 2020. After Los Angeles’ eligible voting population suspiciously shot up in 2021, the voter registration rate declined to a slightly more reasonable 85 percent.

There was a large growth in eligible voters but seemingly no new registered voters. It was as if the hundreds of thousands of new, eligible voters all declined to register to vote.

A similar trend exists for registration rates at the state level. Rates shot up in 2021 with more registrations, only to come back down with the sharp jump in the eligible population.

The result was that the registration rate was back to what it was in 2020 despite many more registered voters.

Los Angeles Voter Purge

Los Angeles had also been battling a lawsuit since 2017 brought by the conservative activist group Judicial Watch to purge its voter rolls of 1.2 million inactive voters.

According to Judicial Watch, 20 percent of Los Angeles County voters were considered inactive with 634,000 not voting in the last ten years.

Federal election law requires that states remove voters which have been inactive for multiple years—those that may have left the state or passed away—to avoid abuse of the voting system. Voters are notified if they are slated to be removed and given the opportunity to re-register. Critics of the process believe purging voters could disenfranchise active voters.

The county confirmed it removed the inactive voters in February of 2023.

Secretary of State Data vs. EAC Data

According to the original complaint from Judicial Watch, the lawsuit was triggered when they reviewed voter registration data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) by county and noticed that Los Angeles was one of the 15 percent of counties with a registration rate over 100 percent—something that should be technically impossible.

It also notes that 11 of California’s 58 counties had rates over 100 percent. Yet based on Secretary of State data, no counties pass that threshold.

In theory, EAC data and Secretary of State data should be similar. But it appears that the Secretary of State data matches up with numbers for EAC active voters—it doesn’t include those that haven’t voted in recent years.

So all of the oddities in the Secretary of State data are ostensibly unrelated to whether the voters are active or not.