Fact check: Trump lies again about California elections ahead of the state’s primaries

(CNN) — President Donald Trump has been lying for years about elections in California. He has done it again in the days prior to the state’s Tuesday primaries for governor and other offices.

In a Fox News interview that aired Saturday, Trump falsely claimed of California, “Their elections are a fraud; their mail-in votes are a fraud.” There’s simply no basis for those vague assertions. Then, later in the interview, Trump said, “You know, they don’t have voting booths. Everything’s by mail.”

That’s not true, either — as CNN has pointed out when Trump has made such claims in the past. Though all active registered voters in California are sent a mail-in ballot, they have the option to ignore that ballot and vote in person instead.

“Any registered voter in California can decide whether to vote at a polling place or vote by mail,” the office of California’s elections chief says on its website.

Individual California counties also explain on their websites that all voters can cast ballots in person. For example, Santa Clara County says:

“Under the Voter’s Choice Act, every voter will automatically be sent a Vote by Mail ballot; however, you are not required to use it. Every voter also has the option to go to a vote center and vote in person instead.

When you vote in person, your mail ballot will automatically be void. You may either surrender your unused ballot at the vote center or you may destroy and dispose of it yourself. Only one ballot will be accepted and counted per voter per election.”

About 3.1 million ballots were cast at in-person voting locations in California in the 2024 general election, representing about 19% of the total ballots cast in the state.

“President Trump, once again, is lying,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, wrote on X in response to Trump’s false claim on Fox. Bonta noted that Californians’ options for casting a ballot include voting in-person at vote centers — “Where, yes, there are voting booths. Lots of them.”

A repeat lie about mail-in voting

As he has on numerous previous occasions, Trump said in the Fox News interview, “No other country in the world is doing mail-in voting anymore because it’s a fraud.” Both parts of that claim are wrong.

In fact, dozens of countries — including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany and Switzerland — allow some or all voters to vote by mail, though the specifics of their policies vary. And there’s no basis for categorically declaring mail-in voting “a fraud”; elections experts say the incidence of fraud tends to be marginally higher with mail-in ballots than with in-person voting, but also that the evidence shows that fraud rates in federal elections are tiny even with mail-in ballots.

Trump’s additional recent lies about California’s elections

Trump told other lies about California elections in comments to reporters on May 20.

In perhaps his wildest declaration on the subject, he said, “If we had Jesus Christ come down and count the votes, I would have won California.” California’s votes are counted accurately, and it’s a Democratic-dominated state in which Trump has lost by massive margins in all three of his races — by 30 percentage points in 2016 (more than 4 million votes), 29 points in 2020 (more than 5 million votes), and 20 points in 2024 (more than 3 million votes).

Immediately after that “Jesus Christ” claim, Trump said of California, “They send out 38 million votes. Nobody knows where they’re going.” Both of these claims are incorrect. California had about 22.6 million voters registered as of about two weeks prior to the last presidential election and about 23.2 million voters registered as of May 18, 2026; there is no basis for any suggestion that some 15 million excess ballots were distributed in any election, nor that elections offices don’t know where they are being sent. You can read more details here.

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