Former election official fact-checks Trump's claims of election fraud in California

Amna Nawaz:

Well, ripple effects and strong opinions are still flowing out of a lengthy interview with President Trump on NBC's "Meet the Press" over the weekend.

Among the points of contention, Trump's baseless claims about the 2020 election results and the security of current elections.

Our Lisa Desjardins has more.

Lisa Desjardins:

Trump walked out of the NBC interview after he repeatedly made false, unproven accusations that the California elections were, in his words, rigged, while also asserting the same about his loss in 2020. Here's a portion of that interview.

President Donald Trump:

Your elections are crooked and you're crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked.

Kristen Welker:

But, Mr. President...

Donald Trump:

And so is ABC and CBS and CNN.

Kristen Welker:

But, Mr. President...

Donald Trump:

You're a one-sided crooked network. Sorry. Let's call it quits because I've had enough.

Lisa Desjardins:

Joining us now to sort out fact from fiction is Tammy Patrick. She's the chief executive officer of programs at the National Association of Election Administrators. She was also an elections official in Arizona for 11 years.

Tammy, let's start with 2020. We're still talking about this, unbelievably, but six years later, what do we know about any evidence of fraud in that election?

Tammy Patrick:

Well, it's great to be here talking about the 2020 election once again.

It's important to remember the 2020 election was audited, it was recounted, all court challenges were heard and ruled on, and there was no evidence to dispute the official results of who won the 2020 presidential election. It's long past time we move on.

Lisa Desjardins:

Now, President Trump does want one thing that is generally popular in polling, and that is the idea of more voter I.D.

But he also wants some very unpopular ideas, like banning voting machines and in addition limiting or entirely banning mail-in voting. And he is actually taking action on that front. So, under his order, the Postal Service itself last week proposed new rules. They would standardize ballot envelopes, but also would require that states give the federal government all the names and addresses of every voter that is slated to get mail-in ballots.

That, of course, faces some serious court challenges. But I want to ask you, for those skeptical about mail-in voting, which has been a drumbeat for President Trump since 2016, what do you say to them about the chances of fraud from mail-in ballots?

Tammy Patrick:

All across the country, voter eligibility is verified, and the voter is authenticated both when they request a ballot and also when the ballot is returned to the election official.

Now, this can be done in a variety of ways depending on state laws, and every state has a law about this. In some cases, it's a comparison between the signature on the envelope and the signature on the voter's file. But in every case, the voter's eligibility is authenticated using what that state law has determined is correct in the state.

And we ensure that the ballot packet is from the intended voter.

Lisa Desjardins:

Do we know how hard it is to fake a signature in that case?

Tammy Patrick:

So I have taken forensic signature training, and I will tell you it's pretty difficult, because it's not just that everyone signs their signature exactly the same each time, because we don't. We're creatures of habit, but we are not perfect.

So there are other things that are taken into account, the slant and slope, the line orientation. It turns out some people are what we call floaters, where you sign your name above the line or the signature is bifurcated by the line. It's that sort of characteristic of how someone signs their signature that someone wouldn't know who's just randomly trying to forge a signature.

So that's part of the security in the system.

Lisa Desjardins:

All right, now let's go to California, which Trump referenced the results as they are coming in right now.

Let's look at the L.A. mayor's race right now, the top two move on to November. Currently, that is two Democrats, Republican and former reality star Spencer Pratt you see there has fallen to third. Again, results are still coming in. President Trump wrote today: "Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. run-offs after the big lead he had. Third World nation. Rigged elections."

And also, not long ago, Speaker Johnson also raised sort of vague doubts about California. California is an outlier in terms of how long it takes to count votes. But why do results change there? And is there an opening for fraud?

Tammy Patrick:

For voters, it's important to realize that, for the election professionals conducting our elections, it's about the process, not the outcome of the election.

So while it's true that California has the largest certification period based on their state's law, in every state in the nation, there's a period of time after Election Day where the election officials are checking to make sure that all eligible ballots are in fact correctly adjudicated, that they're counted if they're supposed to be counted, and that they shouldn't be counted that they are kept from the final tabulation.

So, in California it doesn't really take that much longer than the rest of the nation. On election night, the press project who they think the winner will be, but when the elections are close, we pay closer attention to the process in those days after election.

There's a lot of discussion about, well, why can't it be like Florida? Well, the truth of the matter is, in Florida, they're also counting ballots after Election Day. But unless the race is close, people are not paying as close of attention.

So what's really important here to understand is that part of the reason it takes a while is because of the security of the system. And it's not so much that it's opening up for fraud. It's the fact that it's securing it from any other influence outside of the voter's intent on marking their own individual ballot.

Lisa Desjardins:

In just our last few seconds here we know there are some documented instances of fraud that conservatives track, some alleged, some proven. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative group, cited 43 in 2024.

But that doesn't mean that these are mass attempts at fraud. Are these generally just individual cases, in our last few seconds?

Tammy Patrick:

It is.

I mean, I want to make really clear that voter fraud is exceedingly rare. The number of instances is not zero, but it's also not in the triple digits, even as millions of ballots are being counted. We can't point to a single election where voter fraud changed the outcome of the election.

And don't get me wrong, we want to make sure that's as little as possible. But that's why election professionals all across the country have so many security processes in place. And that's why our elections are transparent and observable, with observers able to watch as the whole process plays out, no matter how long it takes.

Lisa Desjardins:

Tammy Patrick, thank you for covering so much ground in such a short time. We appreciate it.

Tammy Patrick:

Thank you for having me.