- We had a dog on our voting rolls who did vote in the - - Which was registered by a Republican trying to make a point, I will not.

Absolutely, - Trying to make a point.

And she made the point and it's a felony and I urge nobody else to do it.

- And the dog did not vote.

- The dog did vote.

Well, the dog didn't vote.

The owners registered two votes for that dog.

One of them counted.

- Hey everyone from KQED in San Francisco, this is Political Breakdown.

I'm Marisa Lagos.

Today on The Breakdown, as President Donald Trump continues his efforts to make voting harder in America, we sit down with California's current Secretary of State and the Republican challenging her to talk about their competing visions for elections in California.

Secretary Shirley Weber has led the office since 2021 and has been pushing back against the federal government's moves to seize more control over state elections.

Her GOP opponent, Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner, says the state should institute voter ID and speed up the counting process.

Joining me first, Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber, welcome back to Political Breakdown.

- Thanks for the invitation to be with you.

- So you are running for a second four-year term here.

Just quickly, what's your pitch to voters?

- Well, my pitch to voters is obviously we've had a very successful first term that has also been very eventful in terms of what is happening around the nation in terms of our efforts to maintain our voting process, to maintain the right to individuals to vote.

And I think they understand how critical it is today, even more than we were four years ago.

The battles are greater, the challenges are enormous in terms of our right to vote here in California.

And they need somebody who they know that will be strong, will fight for their right to vote and not be the pawn of the current president.

So I think it is really clear more than probably four years ago or even six years ago when I took office that these are critical times, very important times, and it is not time to be played with nor wasted.

- Yeah.

I mean, let's get into some specifics.

As you mentioned, you are California's top election official at a time when the president has made attacking particularly our election system here in California, really a centerpiece of his tenure.

But you do not oversee or administer the actual elections, local offices do.

Talk to me about your role, how you have changed it, if you have, in terms of supporting the 58 counties running these elections ahead of this midterm.

- Well, I think we haven't necessarily changed our role because that's always been the responsibility of the Secretary of State to basically support the 58 counties, making sure that they have what they need, making sure that they also follow state law.

And I think that has become probably the change in it to the extent that in the past we've not had people who challenged our laws, who've challenged California's right to have vote by mail, who's gone after our data and information.

We've not had that as a part of what California or any state in the nation does.

And so the fact that we have that as a centerpiece now, people saying that we have with fraudulent information, the disinformation, the misinformation has been escalating, my role becomes more critical because I am willing to fight for them and fight for their right as the county to have the authority to do the things that they do to support them, to provide the necessary resources so they can get the job done.

So they don't have to worry about what's Shirley going to do?

Is she going to cave into the president?

Is she going to change our process?

No, they know I'm going to fight with them.

I'm going to fight for them and we're going to win in terms of what the Constitution of California says and the constitution of this nation.

- Yeah.

I wonder, have you had to push back?

I know in Shasta County we've had a registrar, somebody who really is an election denier and has sort of ran on a platform or got appointed under trying to undercut the system.

How have you dealt with that type of situation?

- Well, we've been very direct.

We've had our workers, our staff basically go to Shasta County.

I was there the other day in a forum discussing with them the kinds of issues that they're facing to give them the confidence to understand that we're going to protect their right to vote.

We're going to make sure that none of them are attacked, those who work in the polls.

We're going to make sure that our law enforcement is there if necessary.

So we have given them the confidence to say, we're going to protect you.

We're going to make sure you have the right to vote and make sure that all of those things that are in place all the time.

And so we have gone to that level with regards to Shasta as well as with others that may happen that if they happen to decide to do something that is not in the constitution, we go to bat for them.

We don't stand back.

We give them direction and help them at the counties to say, this is what you should not be doing based on the law.

But when they cross that line like they did in Huntington Beach and some other places, we have gone in full force to challenge them in court and to win and to make sure that those in those counties who really want the constitution and their rights protected, that they know they will get it from our administration.

- Yeah.

We've done a series on election integrity here on my show and some of the things, I think there's a number of layers of concerns about this upcoming election.

One is the possibility of federal officials, including immigration agents being at polling places, questions about what happens to ballots after they're cast, that chain of custody being compromised.

And then the US Postal Service, whether they're going to be able to deliver mail ballots on time.

Are those things that you're preparing in case there are attacks on all of those systems?

How are you thinking about that?

- Well, we think very comprehensively and we always have in terms of elections.

I tell folks that what we're doing now, we do it every election.

We're always prepared in case someone decides to do something to attack a polling place or to try to take the ballots or do those kinds of things.

We have lawyers that are trained, that work with us, extra lawyers actually who volunteer to make sure that they are going to protect the election in California.

We are prepared to go into court if we need to at a moment's notice to basically stop folks from doing things.

So we've always done that.

We have heightened that now to make sure that we are prepared for all of those things that take place.

We've seen what happens when it does.

We go in immediately and we respond to it.

Our counties know to call us.

They have numbers to call us.

They know exactly what to do.

We have trained all of our counties to understand what happens, what they can and cannot do in elections.

We train our police, our law enforcement statewide to make sure that law enforcement knows the rules and regulations that they are a part of this process.

So we work around the clock to make sure, and we meet regularly with every county leading up to the election to make sure that they meet regularly and that they get the information and the direction they need and are aware of what takes place.

So we do that on a regular basis, but we do that at a heightened level at this point.

- Yeah.

The other thing that you have been battling the Trump administration over is detailed voter role data.

So this is information that could include driver's license numbers, social security, or at least partial, very sensitive personal information.

I guess I wonder, can you make the case to folks who say, "Well, why shouldn't the federal government have this information?

Don't they already know this about us?"

And maybe on the other side then for Californians who are saying, "I don't want them to have this," how confident should they be that the president's administration hasn't been able to get it?

- Well, most of the folks who I meet with and forms that I have always say at the end, "Thank you so very much for not giving those folks our data.

They don't need it.

And I don't want to be harassed by them.

I don't want to be intimidated."

And we see what happens when they get a little bit of information and it gets distorted.

People are then thrown in jail, things happen to them for periods of time before they can verify something, they over respond to things.

We have not given them the data because they by law don't have a right to have that data.

And we've proven that in court.

So when we were asked to give up our data, some states voluntarily gave it away.

We decided, no, we're not.

And we went to court and we won.

And mainly because they have no need to have that data.

And what are they going to do with the data?

If there's a need for it and a reason to go to court to get it, that's one thing.

But we are not giving it up and we haven't given it up.

And so we have basically told Californians, we have a responsibility.

When you give us your data, you should know that it's not going to be shared around the world with everyone.

You should know exactly what that data's being used for.

And that's what we do.

And so that's why we fight so hard to protect the privacy of the voters of California.

- I know that the two California senators just asked the attorney general here to investigate claims made by a whistleblower that the Department of Homeland Security directed immigration officials to impersonate voters to access online voter data.

Do you have any evidence that this occurred?

- We have folks who've given us information in terms of sharing that information with us.

Our folks are investigating it now, the AG's offices.

I don't personally have that data, but we've been informed that that might exist and we're investigating it because those are the kinds of things we don't want people to believe happens to them in terms of the data that they give to us as well as any data that any agency might have that they shouldn't have a right to have.

And they're not beyond doing things that are not correct.

And so I guess that's the fear that most folks have is that they've seen things in other states.

We've seen them ask for data in Wisconsin and Minnesota and other places and have tried to do things with that data.

So we know that they would love to have more data on all of us and turn our voting system into a system that they can manipulate as they wanted to do with the postal service situation where they would take the data and then decide who would be eligible to vote and then use that list to determine who they would send ballots to.

I mean, it's that kind of thing that in your own mind, you can think that this would never happen.

Who would even think of doing that?

And yet we find that is a part of the narrative that we get, that's the goals that are there.

And so we have to fight every step of the way to make sure there's not a misuse of information.

- Do you think folks who can should consider voting in person this time or dropping their ballots early?

- They can.

And fortunately, because we fought back on the postal service issue, they can.

We recommend always that you do what you feel the most comfortable with.

Those who have some apprehensions about what may happen need to basically put it in our ballot boxes.

Those are secured boxes that are picked up by our folks who work for us and they're still, they're heavy as an iron tank if you've seen them and as a result should use those, but they're free to use the others.

Make sure you vote early if you're dealing with the post office because they do have some different days that they stop collecting ballots and so forth and so on in very remote areas.

So we tell folks, when you get your ballot and you have it in your hand, which will be in a few weeks, vote early.

Don't take the chance of waiting till the last minute and discover you can't find, you don't know where to go or what to do, make a plan to vote and when you can vote early.

- Well, and wouldn't that help speed up our counting too?

I know you've defended the process, but it has opened the state up to criticism and doubt at a time when we see really partisan views of election integrity.

22% of California Republicans say they don't have confidence in our system.

So isn't speeding up the process virtuous in itself?

Isn't that a good thing?

- It's a good thing and we encourage people to do that, but we want people to know that if for whatever happens, something unusual happened, you still have a right to vote.

You have until the day of the election to vote.

If you vote by mail and it gets postmarked the day of the election, you have seven days for us to count it.

So we want people to know that they can, and we hope they do vote early.

It makes it easier for us obviously to count early and to get those things done.

But keep in mind, California still has all these laws that they have created themselves with regards to counting ballots seven days after the election is theirs.

Those kinds of things kind of slow us down.

We have to cure every ballot.

If a person does not sign their envelope, we have to go and find that person and get them.

- I guess that's why I asked if - People - - It's a lot of complicated steps, yeah.

- We can all do things to speed it up.

I wonder, I know your opponent in this race has argued that California should allow candidates to begin processing and verifying mail-in ballots before election day.

That happens in several dozen other states.

Was that something you would support if the legislature were to consider it?

- If the legislature were to consider it, we wouldn't probably be opposed to it providing it doesn't take away people's right to vote.

It doesn't change the opportunity that's there.

They start counting the ballots before, but they don't actually push the button to give us the count.

So they start processing the ballots before election day.

We just have so many, that's what people need to understand.

Some states have a few thousand ballots to count and we've got 23 million people who are eligible to vote who want to vote.

We also have the ability for people to actually register to vote on the day of the election, which also means we then have to validate their right to vote.

So there's a lot of things that California has put in to try to create greater opportunities for individuals to vote that really slows the process down.

- Yeah.

I want to ask you about Proposition 39.

This is a voter ID measure.

I know California already requires folks to show ID when they register and to sign under perjury, but this would say you need to show an ID when you come to the polls or put an ID number on your ballot if you mail it in.

Why are you opposed?

It seems relatively straightforward.

- Well, the issue is that is it necessary?

Do we really need to add an additional step?

Now you complain about the steps we have.

Now you want to add another step and we already do voter ID.

We already basically make sure the folks have to have some form of identification in order to register to vote.

And then we use that information to create the database that we have.

So the question becomes why is it necessary?

Oftentimes those things are put in place merely to deter people from voting, to make it more difficult for people to vote.

If you had to show it when you went to the ballot box to your ID, that means more people would have to go in to vote, which is what some of them want.

And most of our folks saying they don't want to have to go into to vote.

The number that they're given to use, now we got another system that you got to remember another number to put on your ballot in order to be able to vote.

All those kinds of things complicate matters.

And the reason why they claim they're doing it is because they want to get rid of fraud.

And yet we know in California there is no widespread fraud.

So then why do you want this additional step if there's no fraud, if it's not going to stop quote fraud, then what do we need it for other than to make it more complicated for people to vote?

- I want to end by asking you about sort of your personal connection to all this.

We had you on the show a few years ago and talked about your very remarkable life story.

You're the daughter of sharecroppers who fled the Jim Crow South.

And that was a horrible chapter that was largely driven by some white Americans' desire to hold power and prevent Black Americans from exercising their own power.

And I just wonder what it is like for you being in this position, in this moment, as a president, really blatantly tries to work to prevent folks from voting.

What are you bringing to this role and just from your own personal story?

- Well, I was born in the city of Hope and so I hope I bring hope to people.

I hope they can look at me and say, "You know what?

If this girl can undergo all that and her family have these challenges and still have a positive attitude about voting, still have the confidence that what we're doing is right and strong and that we're being transparent in the process," that they can have the kind of same relationship with election and voting.

Voting was centrally important to my family.

I mean, very important.

The power that my father felt he had when he voted, the fact that we had voting in our living room, we were a polling place in South Central Los Angeles until the day my mother died.

It was really a pride, a state of pride of look what we can do.

We can come from situations that aren't the best and then actually move forward and become a light of hope in a community in South Central Los Angeles that this is voting and we vote and we're not negative about voting.

We're very positive about it.

We think this is our power, this is what we do.

So I hope my life story brings that kind of reality that times have changed and we don't want to go back.

In a few weeks, I'm going to be honored in Arkansas for the Hall of Fame, which is really interesting as a kid who comes out of a situation where you're fleeing Arkansas and now you're being celebrated in the Hall of Fame.

But I think it says times have changed.

We've gone through a long journey.

Let us not turn back.

And that's my real issue is that we have fought so hard to get the right to vote for everyone in California.

We don't want to turn back and end up with some system that once again disenfranchises people who should have the right to vote.

- Dr.

Shirley Weber, California's Secretary of State.

Thank you so much for your time.

- Thank you.

And I appreciate being on here with you guys.

Take care.

- Joining me now, Republican candidate for Secretary of State, Don Wagner.

He's an Orange County supervisor and former state lawmaker.

Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner, welcome to Political Breakdown.

- Thank you, Marisa.

It's great to be with you.

- So you're running to be California's next Secretary of State, obviously overseeing elections here.

What's your pitch to voters?

- My pitch to voters is this, that the election, our election process can be run much better.

We are, for example, the last state in the nation to report our election results.

We have identified over 870,000 ghost voters on our ballot, on our election rolls who get ballots all the time, whether they vote them or not.

We have got election integrity issues that are frankly across the political spectrum.

It's not just Republicans.

I hear it from no-party preference voters.

I hear it from Democrat voters that there are challenges to the election system, and regardless of whether the elections are fair or not, and overwhelmingly they are, but regardless of whether they are or not, if the public lacks confidence, increasingly it does, there's a problem with our election system.

The incumbent's had six years to fix it and simply has done nothing to make things better.

She's resisted calls from the governor and the New York Times, for example, to count our ballots faster saying, "Oh no, no, no, that can't be done."

I think it can be done.

And I'm proposing a number of reforms to the voters of California that will make them feel the elections are more trustworthy than they do right now.

- Yeah.

I want to get to some of those proposals because they're really interesting.

But before we do, you said 870,000 ghost voters.

What are you basing that on?

We have 23 million, I guess, eligible voters in California, right?

- Correct.

And the 873, it's actually 873,000 and some change, is a number that's been identified by Judicial Watch.

And they've done some substantial digging into the voter rolls throughout the state of California.

And they have filed a lawsuit, I'm one of the plaintiffs, along with the American Independent Party, against the state of California and against the Secretary of State because state and federal law allow for the Secretary of State and the registrars to clean up the voter rolls, to remove folks who have passed away, who have moved out of state, which we know is endemic here in California.

And so that's the number that Judicial Watch has identified through their research into each of the 58 counties here in California.

- Okay.

So that doesn't mean that those are people voting or anything like that, just that the people who shouldn't be getting ballots.

- It's people who should not be getting ballots.

And what ends up happening is you have us in this state just a wash in ballots.

I will talk to voters out on the campaign trail, and I make the joke about how, well, the first thing they have to do when they sit down to fill out their ballot is throw away the ballot of the person who rented the place from them two or three times ago or their kids who moved out of state or the people they bought their house from.

And that is a sentiment that is just overwhelming out in the public because they're seeing all of these ballots.

I'm not telling you all of those ballots are being voted.

They're not.

I am telling you, however, that mere fact of being a wash in ballots leaves people to question the integrity.

And when a person like Donald Trump says, "Oh, there's fraud out there," a lot of folks will look at those ballots and say, "I can see where that would be the case."

- Yeah.

- I think we need to stop that.

- Yeah.

You brought up Donald Trump.

I have to ask because we're in 2026 and this has become such a huge issue.

Who won the 2020 presidential election?

- Well, first of all, it's very clear that it was Joe Biden because we all lived under the Biden administration and - - Well, you can say that, but that's not actually an answer.

That means that he got sworn in.

I think a lot of times that's a sort of way to - - Joe Biden won that.

Marisa, Joe Biden won that election.

I have had people come to me and tell me Donald Trump won it.

I say, no, he didn't.

I've had people who will tell me, oh, Donald Trump even won here in California.

No, you are smoking the good stuff if you think that.

Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

- Cool.

We can dispense with that.

I wonder if you see the Secretary of State's role as trying to get as many eligible Californians to vote as possible.

- I think that's an important role.

And I will say, I've been asked, okay, what does the Secretary of State do well?

And I will say one of the things that she has done is indeed try to get everybody who is eligible to vote to vote.

And I would continue that effort.

I support that.

What I want to make sure is that we also have a system where every eligible voter is able to vote, vote easily, but no ineligible voter is in our voting booths.

- So let's talk about these very specific proposals you're making because they all, I would argue, seem pretty reasonable and nonpartisan.

You want to let counties start to count mail-in ballots before election day.

This happens in, I think, some two dozen other states already.

You want to give counties more funding to hire more staff to speed up the count.

And you want to require counties to publish results covering most ballots within 72 hours.

Are these proposals that you think the legislature would be open to?

You were a former lawmaker, that's where I know you from.

Is this something that's been brought up before?

- I have spent some time in the legislature and I am not blind to the fact that if a Republican wins this office, it's going to be national news.

And I think that's the secret to the question, well, will the legislature be responsive?

Because I will be able to look the legislature in the eye with these proposals and a few others that we've got out there and say, "Hey, you're surprised I'm here.

Don't take it from me.

Take it from the people that surprised you and put me here.

This is a genuine concern of your voters and mine, and we need to be responsive to them."

So I actually am optimistic that if I'm able to win this office, we will have an opportunity to go to the legislature and say, "Here are some good, and as you say, Marisa, common sense reforms."

This is not to help Republicans win more races.

It's not to help Democrats win more races.

It's to make sure the voters are able to vote and are confident in that vote."

I think that'll get some traction in the legislature.

- Yeah.

What about mail-in voting?

- Well, mail-in voting, the thing is we used to have a fairly standard absentee ballot process, and most other states do it, and it worked for us.

If you want an absentee ballot, I, as Secretary of State, would encourage you to get one.

And I would say absolutely, we should let folks who have, for whatever reasons they want, an absentee ballot to be able to access it.

I do think, in part, because our voting roles are not clean and we have those ghost voters, that simply mailing everybody a ballot is going too far until we've got the roles as clean as they can be.

And perfection, of course, is not what I'm looking for because this is an entity run by human beings.

Perfection is never achievable, but what is achievable are better, cleaner, more accurate roles.

If we're able to do that, then the problem that I've identified and that others tell me is out there is certainly much less.

What I would like to see is us go back to the old absentee rules.

And I also would like to change the ballot harvesting rules because right now that's illegal in many, many other states where you've got party apparatus going out to the voters, collecting ballots, turning them in or not turning them in.

And end of the day, I think that the person who is collecting that ballot and turning it in ought be beholden to the voter, not to a political party, which is the way we used to do it.

- So we've seen the president attack the state's election system and really seek to exercise unprecedented control that a lot of people see as illegal over not just California's, but other states' election systems.

You, I believe, have said during this campaign that you would hand over voter rules that include sensitive personal information to the federal government.

Why do you see that as needed?

- What I have said, a little bit of background.

For example, the County of Orange, where I'm a county supervisor, has been sued by the Department of Justice because we did identify illegal aliens on our voting rules.

We had a dog on our voting rolls who did vote in the - - Which was registered by a Republican trying to make a point, I will know.

Absolutely trying - To make a point.

And she made the point and it's a felony and I urge nobody else to do it.

- And the dog did not vote.

- The dog did vote.

Well, the dog didn't vote.

The owners registered two votes for that dog.

One of them counted.

Okay.

So what I would say is that there is a role if the Department of Justice wants to come in and help us clean our voting roles, that we should embrace that.

That doesn't mean turn over all of the rules.

It doesn't mean turn over private identifying information.

It does mean, however, that we are allowed to get a look at databases maintained, for example, by the federal government to determine if somebody is, well, first of all, to take the dog example, a human, but more importantly, here legally and in fact eligible to vote.

Now, I spent most of my career not in politics, but frankly as a business lawyer, and I have done complicated business transactions.

I have negotiated decrees and settlement agreements and privacy protecting documents that are enforceable in court.

And those would in fact be available to the state of California.

Don't turn over all of the information, but do accept the federal government's help in doing what we need to do under existing, not new, under existing state and federal law, and that's clean our voter rolls.

- I guess I just want to push back because there was a recent poll from IGS showing 64% of voters say they are confident in our election system.

72% approved on mail-in voting as a primary means.

There's a lot of anxiety about what the president is trying to do, concerns that he could send ICE agents or federal troops to polls.

He had this executive order essentially trying to give the US Postal Service power over who can vote by mail just to decide if I'm eligible, if you're eligible.

I mean, given all of that, what will you say to voters who say, "I don't trust him."

I think he's trying to put a sum on the scale here."

- And I will agree in most cases with the voters who say that.

I mean, I have come out, I am not in support of the SAVE Act.

Let me back up and tell you why.

The US Constitution is very, very clear about the elections.

And it says explicitly the elections are to be run by the state subject to action by Congress, not subject to action by the president, not subject to action by the executive branch or ICE or the prosecutors.

And so we don't need ICE overseeing our elections.

We don't need the federal government overseeing our elections.

We can do it right, but what we unfortunately have got on the ground in Sacramento and in our counties is a system that hasn't been done right with too many ghost voters, with too much ballot harvesting, with too much uncertainty, 64%.

Marisa, that's actually a very, very low number.

It should be 85 or 90% have confidence in our system.

I think everybody should.

The examples of fraud are relatively minor, but at the end of the day, if we don't have that robust agreement that the elections are fair, people stay home.

People say to me, as I've heard when I knock on doors, when I'm campaigning, I literally hear this almost every day I'm out there, "Why should I vote?

They just won't count it.

I just don't trust it."

And that's debilitating to democracy.

We've got to get that 64 number up and up substantially.

- Yeah.

Your opponent, Shirley Weber, has a personal connection to the nation's deep history of voter suppression.

Her family fled the Jim Crow South.

And I think when she talks about this thing, she's coming from that perspective.

I just wonder, for folks who may not be super familiar with you and your career, what do you bring to this from your personal or professional life?

Why this office?

Why now?

- Why this office and why now?

What I bring to this is a deep experience in government.

I have served in the state legislature.

As you mentioned.

I've served as a mayor of a very large town.

Irvine, we had over 280,000 citizens, residents when I was the mayor.

I've served as the board chairman, put there as chairman by Democrats.

My board is a majority controlled by the Democrats, put in the chairman's office for two consecutive years because I can bring to this a nonpartisan, let's just get government working the right way.

I've seen the government work at all different levels and at, at the end of the day, what I bring is a recognition of how government works or how it doesn't and a willingness to do things differently in this office.

My opponents had six years and the confidence is just waning and the problems remain.

- Don Wagner, Orange County supervisor, former lawmaker and former tons of titles at the local level.

I really appreciate your time today.

- Thank you very much.

- And that is a wrap for political breakdown.

We're production of KQED.

Our engineers today are Brendan Willard and Jim Bennett.

Our producer is Izzy Bloom.

Our video team includes Derek Lartaud, Rick Santangelo, Kate Lowpensky, and Vivian Morales.

I'm Marisa Lagos.

Thanks for being here.