2026年6月8日17:59:54.865Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/08/politics/california-voter-fraud-claims-republicans
- 加州初选结果公布的漫长延迟，让自2020年以来基本平息的共和党选民欺诈论调重新抬头。
- 尽管没有任何证据，特朗普和共和党知名人士仍在宣扬欺诈指控，而该州缓慢的计票过程助长了这一论调。
- 此次论调死灰复燃，距离中期选举还有五个月时间，如果民主党表现出色，此次选举的胜负可能取决于一场势均力敌的参议院席位争夺战。
本文由AI生成摘要，经CNN编辑审核。
周日中午时分，福克斯商业电视台主持人查尔斯·加斯帕里诺在X平台上宣称：“我讨厌总统口中的‘选举被盗’论调……”
然而仅两小时后，加斯帕里诺本人就开始暗示选举可能被盗。前共和党众议员亚当·金齐格指出，总统唐纳德·特朗普声称上周的加州选举“存在舞弊”，加斯帕里诺回应道：“也许确实如此。”
目前没有任何证据表明加州选举结果存在任何欺诈行为。正如CNN的亚历克斯·迈克尔森所解释的那样，该州计票过程耗时较长，是因为其选举运作方式使然，而后期清点的邮寄选票通常大幅倾向民主党，这在很大程度上是因为特朗普将共和党人推向了反对邮寄投票的对立面。
但由于公众对这些细节漠不关心、网络信息茧房效应以及赤裸裸的政治操作，有关民主党窃取加州州长选举和洛杉矶市长选举结果的论调在社交媒体上迅速蔓延。甚至连此前对选民欺诈论调持保留态度的共和党人也参与其中。
在右翼选民欺诈论调沉寂五年之后，如今它卷土重来，气焰嚣张——完全无视这套说辞正是2021年1月6日美国国会山暴力骚乱的导火索。
佛罗里达州州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯就是这一趋势的最新代表。
德桑蒂斯在2020年大选后从未是选举否认论的核心人物。在2024年共和党总统初选中挑战特朗普时，他还曾驳斥特朗普关于选举被盗的主张，称“所有那些被抛出的理论最终都被证明是站不住脚的”。
但在本周三，德桑蒂斯却指责加州新批次的选票“似乎总是朝着同一个方向流动”。他还带着阴谋论口吻补充道：“一直数票直到得到你想要的结果？”
特朗普在2020大选后发起的选民欺诈运动，一大问题在于他难以说服自己的司法部认真对待这些指控。无论是现任还是前任司法部长都对此表示反对，而特朗普曾试图提拔杰弗里·克拉克担任该职位，指望后者会采信他那些荒诞的主张，这一事件也臭名昭著。
但如今，他领导下的司法部却在刻意渲染选举存在异常的论调。
洛杉矶美国检察官办公室上周末宣布“正在开展多起选举欺诈调查”，同时声称存在所谓“严重的结构性漏洞”。
周一，美国南纽约地区检察官杰伊·克莱顿在接受CNBC采访时也助长了此类怀疑。尽管他补充称自己并非声称存在欺诈行为，但他表示加州为“欺诈行为创造了可乘之机”。
仅凭这番言论，就已经偏离了检察官本应严格依据证据而非理论行事的职业准则。
当被两次问及社交媒体上流传的虚假说法——洛杉矶市长选举中新增的大量选票都没有流向共和党候选人斯宾塞·普拉特——克莱顿两次都没有反驳这一说法，尽管洛杉矶美国检察官办公室早已辟谣。
社交媒体上也随处可见这样的言论：初选当天民主党优势大幅提升，这令人难以置信——尽管在深蓝州加州，这是常见现象。特朗普本人周一也借此造势，称普拉特“原本大幅领先”，后来却被反超“根本不可能”。
“选举被操纵了！”特朗普在Truth Social平台上写道。
（事实上，在这个“金州”加州，选举结果的走向向来如此；只是普拉特和前福克斯新闻主持人史蒂夫·希尔顿两位州长候选人的参选，让更多右翼人士开始关注加州这个通常在全国选举中被当作“马后炮”的州。）
在回应特朗普称加州选举存在舞弊的视频片段时，保守派电视主持人梅根·麦凯恩表示：“不管怎么说，我身边那些从未谈论过选举被盗问题的人，现在都在说加州的选举被窃取了。”
这种情况绝非个例。更令人不安的是，这种现象发生在民众对选举的怀疑程度多年来持续下降之后。
尽管共和党在2022年中期选举中表现不佳，但当时主要是亚利桑那州州长候选人卡里·莱克等人在抱怨选举欺诈，党内其他人士大多对其置之不理。
特朗普在2024年的胜选让共和党几乎没有理由再抱怨所谓的选举欺诈。2025年的选举结果对民主党来说压倒性胜利，且仅在少数几个州出现，这也不利于此类抱怨的滋生。
民调显示民众对选举欺诈的担忧有所下降。《华盛顿邮报》与马里兰大学的联合民调显示，2021年和2023年的调查中，约30%的美国民众和60%的共和党人认为“有确凿证据”证明2020年大选存在欺诈。但在2024年大选后，这一比例分别降至16%和21%。
话虽如此，这显然仍是一个一触即发的火药桶。
在共和党数月来毫无根据地声称无证移民投票是个大问题，并推动相关立法以阻止这种情况后，3月的马里斯特学院民调显示，民众对即将到来的选举公正性的信心降至近年来最低点——甚至低于2020年大选前的水平。
该调查还显示，70%的共和党人预计欺诈行为将破坏即将到来的选举。
4月的路透社-益普索民调也显示，超过80%的共和党人认为非公民投下了大量非法选票（没有任何证据支持这一说法），并担心邮寄选票或缺席选票存在欺诈行为（没有证据表明这是一个重大问题）。
不难想象事态可能会变得多么糟糕。
近年来选民基本没有遭遇过势均力敌的选举结果，但如果民主党在2026年表现强劲，仍可能引发参议院多数席位的激烈角逐。仅一场势均力敌的选举，就可能决定哪个政党掌握权力的关键杠杆。
加州耗时漫长的计票过程，似乎重新唤醒了美国右翼内部这头沉睡的巨兽。显然，随着时间的推移，加上特朗普试图改写1月6日事件的历史，人们已经对其潜在后果变得麻木不仁。
事实上，即使在2020年大选后，许多知名共和党人也未必认同特朗普的理论；他们大多淡化了这些说法，或者只是拒绝反驳他。
但这一次，右翼人士似乎全程附和，乐于与特朗普一道散播毫无证据的怀疑论调。在2026年中期选举还有五个月的当下，这是一个令人担忧的前景。
California, and the dangerous sudden resurgence of GOP voter fraud fever
2026-06-08T17:59:54.865Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/08/politics/california-voter-fraud-claims-republicans
- The long delay in California primary results have brought back GOP voter fraud claims that had largely subsided since 2020.
- Trump and prominent GOP figures are making fraud allegations despite zero evidence, fueled by the state’s slow ballot-counting process.
- The resurgence comes five months before midterm elections that, if Democrats perform well, could hinge on a single close Senate race.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
Around noon on Sunday, Fox Business Network’s Charles Gasparino declared on X, “I hate the ‘stolen election’ stuff from the president …”
Just two hours later, though, Gasparino himself was entertaining the idea that an election is being stolen. After former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger noted that President Donald Trump is claiming last week’s election in California is “rigged,” Gasparino responded: “Maybe it is.”
There is zero evidence that there is anything fraudulent about the election results in California. As CNN’s Elex Michaelson has explained, the state’s ballot-counting process takes a long time because of how its elections are run, and late-counted mail ballots have typically favored Democrats in large part because Trump has turned Republicans against voting by mail.
But through a combination of disinterest with those details, internet silos and raw politics, theories that Democrats are stealing the California governor’s race and the Los Angeles mayoral race have caught on like wildfire on social media. It has even extended to Republicans who previously kept such voter-fraud claims at arm’s length.
After five years of voter fraud fever on the right going somewhat dormant, it’s back with a vengeance — ignoring the fact that this exact rhetoric led to ugly and violent places at the seat of the US government on January 6, 2021.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last epitomized this trend.
DeSantis was never a leading election denier in the aftermath of 2020. And when he was challenging Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries, he dismissed Trump’s claims of a stolen election, saying, “All those theories that were put out did not prove to be true.”
But on Wednesday, DeSantis decried how new batches of votes in California “always seem to go one way.”
“Count until you get the result you want?” DeSantis added, conspiratorially.
A major problem with Trump’s voter fraud crusade after the 2020 election was that he struggled to get his own Justice Department to take his claims seriously. Both his current and former attorney general resisted, and Trump infamously tried to elevate someone to that post who would entertain his wild claims, Jeffrey Clark.
But today, his DOJ is playing into the idea that something is amiss.
The US attorney’s office in Los Angeles over the weekend announced “multiple election fraud investigations,” while citing supposed “serious structural vulnerabilities.”
And on Monday, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, was on CNBC feeding into such suspicions. While qualifying that he wasn’t claiming there was fraud, he said California had created “the opportunity for fraud.”
Even just saying that goes afield of how prosecutors, who generally strictly deal in evidence and not theories, are supposed to conduct themselves.
Clayton was also asked twice about false viral claims that large numbers of votes had been added to the totals in the Los Angeles mayoral race without any of them going to Republican candidate Spencer Pratt. Neither time did Clayton push back on that assertion — even though the US Attorney’s office in Los Angeles had already debunked those claims.
Social media is also rife with people suggesting it’s unthinkable that Democrats were gaining so much after primary day — despite that being a common occurrence in deep-blue California. Trump himself leaned into that narrative on Monday, saying it was “not possible” for Pratt to have fallen behind “after the big lead he had.”
“Rigged Elections!” Trump said on Truth Social.
(In fact, that’s how things almost always go in the Golden State; it just so happens that the candidacies of Pratt and former Fox News host Steve Hilton for governor made more people on the right pay increased attention to California, which is often an electoral afterthought nationally.)
While responding to a clip of Trump saying California’s election was rigged, conservative TV personality Meghan McCain said, “For whatever it’s worth, people in my life who have never ever spoken about stolen elections in any capacity are now saying this about California.”
That tracks more widely, too. And disturbingly, it’s happening after years of election suspicion trending down.
Even though Republicans under-performed in the 2022 midterm elections, it was mostly the likes of Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake complaining about fraud, while the rest of the party ignored her.
Trump’s win in 2024 gave the GOP little reason to complain about supposed fraud. And the 2025 results were so decisive for Democrats — and in just a few states — that it wasn’t conducive to such complaints.
Polling shows a decline in concerns about fraud. Washington Post-University of Maryland polling showed about 3 in 10 Americans and 6 in 10 Republicans thought there was “solid evidence” of fraud in the 2020 election, in surveys conducted in 2021 and 2023. But those numbers dropped to 16% and 21%, respectively, after the 2024 election.
That being said, this is clearly still a tinderbox.
After months of Republicans baselessly claiming voting by undocumented immigrants is a major problem and pushing for legislation to prevent it, a March Marist College poll showed confidence in the fairness of the upcoming election was lower than it’s been at any point in recent years — including ahead of the 2020 election.
The survey also showed 70% of Republicans expected fraud to mar the upcoming election.
An April Reuters-Ipsos poll also showed more than 8 in 10 Republicans believed noncitizens cast large numbers of illegal votes (there is no evidence for this), and were concerned about fraudulent mail‑in or absentee ballots (there is no evidence this is a major problem).
It’s not hard to see how this could get ugly.
While voters have largely been spared super-close election results in recent years, even a strong showing for Democrats in 2026 could result in a tight battle for the Senate majority. A single close race could well decide which party holds a major lever of power.
California’s time-consuming ballot-counting process seems to have reawakened this sleeping giant inside the American right. And apparently the passage of time and Trump’s efforts to rewrite the history of January 6 have inured people to the potential consequences.
Indeed, even after the 2020 election, many prominent Republicans didn’t necessarily endorse Trump’s theories; they largely watered them down or merely declined to disagree with him.
But this time, the right seems to be along for the ride, happy to join him in seeding suspicion despite the lack of evidence. That’s a scary prospect five months before the 2026 election.
