Why It Takes So Long to Count California Ballots

And it's ongoing because the votes are still being counted, and it has to do with this interesting California process of curing ballots that have some kind of mistake. Here's the story in GV wire. Christine Pelosi leads charge and just get this insanely biased headline, Christine Pelosi leads charge to ensure every vote counts in tight Duarte Gray race. In a closely contested California House race. Christine Pelosi, daughter of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. Really we're calling her the

emerita speaker emerita for those who don't know that. The title emeritus from male or emerita for a female. That's like given to a professor who is like honorably retired from their posts, like the speaker, the professor emeritus of blah blah.

a signature issue. Curing involves fixing problems with voters' ballots to ensure they can be counted before the December third deadline. Pelosi told the San Francisco Chronicle she was quote staking out a modesto home hoping to connect with a voter whose ballot was rejected due to a signature problem. Elizabeth Churr, another San Francisco volunteer, estimates she's cured twenty five ballots

in the last week. We're also letting you know that wasn't spam, because a lot of people get post election emails and texts and they just delete them thinking they're spam, Pelosi explained to one voter. Both campaigns engaged in curing efforts. Both campaigns are engaged in this effort, which could prove decisive in the razor thin race. Adam Gray stated, that's all part of making sure that every vote is counted. So let me explain what's going on.

more money than Republicans on the hole in California. And by the way, this is a California specific thing. Democrats identify these ballots that have been turned in but have a problem with them, and reconnect with the voter who allegedly turned them in to try to get that voter to quote, cure their ballot, fix their ballot, to fix whatever signature issue may have existed in order for that ballot to then count California did the Democrats in California

did this earlier this year in March. They had this Proposition one. So Proposition one was this ballot initiative. It was supposed to fund some kind of like mental health services. Anyway, it was something Democrats wanted to pass and this we voted on it during the March California primary election. They also had this statewide ballot initiative, and it was about a fifty to fifty thing. It was very close after election night, it was very close. And what did Gavin

Newsom do well? Gavin Newsom wanted this past. Gavin Newsom has this massive war chest of campaign money that he's still got. It's basically leftovers from his recall campaign. And this was actually, this is the real flop of the effort to recall Governor Newsom is that basically we tried to recall Newsom and he was able to fundraise so much money off of it that now he's got this war chest that he uses for all kinds of stuff.

So he used it this money earlier this year on a massive statewide Cure your Ballot campaign to help ensure that this Proposition one, which was again introduced earlier this year, to help make sure that Proposition one got over the fifty percent hump. And that's what Democrats are doing. Basically, the reason why it takes California a long time to count votes is not due to incompetence. It's not because people are slow, it's not any of that. It is deliberate.

This is the deliberate reason why Democrats do. This is so they can get these highly sketchy, highly questionable ballots that were turned in without a signature or the signature didn't match something, take it back to the voter. So, oh it didn't go through. Do you want to try and fix it? Wink wink, nudge, nudge, hint hint, And they they bring it back to these voters and make sure that these voters fix their ballot, and then they get more and more votes. So this Adam Gray John

Duarte race. Duarte was leading on election day. d'Arte has been leading for most of the time frame since election day, but his lead is getting narrower and narrower. He's only up two hundred and ten votes. So by the time this is all said and done, I mean, they could cure enough ballots in this congressional district to maybe get Adam Gray over the top. But that's what this is about.

It's about Democrats in a tight race knowing that they have more money, more of a political machine than Republicans have in California, almost anywhere in California. They're gonna have more resources, more money, more get out the vote efforts, more get out the cur your vote efforts, and so they would have more of an ability to cure more votes and maybe swing an election. That's the whole point of this. It's basically institutionalized cheating. Like this is a

ballot that was incorrectly cast, it shouldn't count. But and this is the insanity is first of all, the insanity of how the media is framing this. This is a San Francisco Chronicle story. I don't know who wrote this headline on reading it on GV wire, Christine palo He leads charge to ensure every vote counts in tight Duarte careers ball You know what, No, she doesn't care about every vote being counted. She wants every Democrat vote counted. What do you think she's doing. She's not there with

an altruistic desire for democracy to reign. No, she wants to get this Democrat elected in a swing seat. That's what she's doing. She's a Democratic Party hack. That That's who Christine Pelosi is. She's not interested in the all truistic Oh, this poor old Republican farmer out on the West Side. He didn't he didn't quite you know, the

way he signed his handkerchief or whoever. Since he had that stroke, his signature hasn't matched, So we got to make sure that he's able to vote because his mind's still sharp, but his right hand doesn't work so well. So so we got to make sure that that old Republican farmer who voted for John Duarte got to make sure his vote actually count. Because I'm Christine Pelosi, ignore my last name. What I care about is democracy in action. That's what this is all. No, she's a Democrat hack.

She wants John Duarte to lose, she wants Adam Gray to win. She's out there curing obvious likely Democrat voters ballots. That's what she's doing. How they could have written this headline, Christine Pelosi leads the charge to ensure every vote counts in tight Duarte Gray. No, she doesn't give a she doesn't want any Republican vote count. That's not the point of what she's doing. I think even she'd tell you that she's there to cure the Democrat votes. So, I

mean that is precisely what is happening. Is that is the reason why it takes a long time to count the votes in California. It's not. It has nothing to do with incompetence, it has nothing to do with Oh, they're so slow, how come these No, it's on purpose. They deliberately count ballots slowly so that they can cure ballots so that Democrats can win. That is it. And

this is a legal process in California. It's baked into California law because the Democrats have written all of our election law over the last fourteen years of completely unified Democrat ruling California. So again, this is this is all on purpose. When we return, I just want to talk about how this relates to the idea of the whole

Democrat push for quote voting rights. As they characterize it is nothing more than a subtle cover for let's try to institute processes that we think will result in Democrats winning. That's next on the John Girardi Show. We're talking about Christine Pelosi's efforts in the thirteenth California US the thirteenth Congressional district of California, the race between John Duarte and Adam Gray. This is the kind of North Valley sort of on the west side, going up north towards Modesto

Congressional District. Christine Pelosi is spearheading the Democrat efforts to quote cure ballots, and what that means is this is basically the institutionalized form of cheating that Democrats have the advantage in in California elections, where basically, if it's really close, Democrats, who always have more money, more apparatus, more infrastructure than

Republicans do. Democrats will take all the ballots that have signature issues, all the vote by mail ballots that have signature issues, no signature, the signature doesn't match the problem there, they will try to go back to their likely voters and say, hey, your signature was screwed up. Could you try and fix this? And then your votal count and then they go back to their voters and they collect

or vote well after election day. That is why California takes a long time to do elections because on purpose, we have this ridiculous system where you're able to quote cure your ballot when you've cast it inadequately. And this relates to the whole rhetoric surrounding Democrats saying that they are four voting rights and the way that the media has sort of unflinchingly done propaganda work for Democrats to talk about how Democrats are trying to vote Democrats are

pursuing legislation to protect voting rights. Republicans are opposing Democrats voting rights legislation. Blah blah blah blah blah, Christine, And this has to be the most ridiculous headline of the whole year. This gv wire piece, which was this GV wire rerunning a San Francisco Chronicle piece where the headline and the Again, I don't know if GeV wire wrote this headline who or if they're just re doing the San Francisco Chronicle headline. Christine Pelosi leads charge to ensure

every vote counts in tight Duarte Gray race. No, she is not interested in getting every vote to count. She's a Democrat party hack. She's trying to get Adam Gray to win. She's trying to cure all the Democrat ballots that are screwed up. She is not trying her best to cure, you know, the ballots of some Republican farmer from the West Side who obviously voted for John Duarte but maybe a signature didn't match because he had a stroke or something. And what I'm trying to explain is

California takes a long time to count its votes. To count its ballots after election day on purpose. This is an on purpose setup so that Democrats can cure enough votes so that they can get themselves over the top in the event of a really tight election. It's basically an institutionalized way for Democrats to cheat, because in any other state, if you had a vote by mail ballot come in with a serious signature problem, it just wouldn't count,

and there wouldn't be an opportunity to quote cure it. Now, Democrats when they talk about voting rights, they're talking about stuff like this. They're saying that if you're an evil, nasty Republican and you think, hey, I don't think we should have some process for four weeks after the election you being able to fix an obvious signature problem with your ballot that you turn in. You didn't follow the rules, you didn't put your signature on your ballot. You screwed,

You've got a huge discrepancy. Sorry, you're sol you know, no, you're This ballot is not going to count. A Republican saying that in the interest of hey, I can see a lot of scenarios where someone could screw around with this and how that could threaten the integrity of this vote, this ballot that there are a lot of ways for a ballot like that to be cast in a way

that's fraudulent. So in the interest of the security of this election, no, you, okay, we'll afford someone a vote by mail process, but you got to follow the directions. You got to follow the rules. When you're doing vote by mail, there is less of a chain of custody surrounding that ballot. There's more opportunity for fraud to happen. Ergo, we're going to require Okay, we'll let you do a vote by mail, but it's got to be done right. It's got to be done like this, this, this, and this.

The ballot's got to come to the county elections office by this date. You have to make it in by this date. Blah blah, blah blah blah. So a Republican saying that Democrats cast that as being anti democratic, opposed to voting rights, which is nonsense. What is the norm for voting in America? The norm that has been established over the last you know, coming up on two hundred

and fifty years of this country's existence. The norm that has developed, which is reflected in federal statutes, the norm for how an American exercises his or her voting rights is voting in person at your precinct at a secret ballot booth. That is the norm. That is the favored ideal. Everything else has been an extension of that, a concession from that ideal. In the light of some kind of exigen circumstance or another, you should vote in person on

election day. The state will grant you some concession to vote absentee in the light of some serious circumstance or some sort of unavoidable, difficult circumstance. Okay, I myself voted absentee. I was a college student in Indiana, but my primary residence I still listed it as my home, my childhood home in Clovis, California. So I voted absentee. A military service member who's deployed to Iraq, okay, well, his home is in Topeka, Kansas. So the state of Kansas sends

it is absentee ballot. Okay, that's fine. But the soldier in Iraq voting in Kansas, and the college student in Indiana voting in California, they've got to do it right. You've got to mail in your ballot by this date. You need to fill everything right, you need to seal it correctly, you need to sign it correctly. Why because the ideal that we've arrived at in America of in person at your local precinct, at a secret ballot booth.

We have determined that is the most secure way to vote, the way with the least amount of pressure, the least amount of undue outside influence pressuring someone into voting against what they actually want. The whole concept of the secret ballot was developed in the nineteenth century actually in Australia, and it was in response to these Australian elections that were just turning into drunken brawls where people would vote just sort of out in public and everyone could see

who you're voting for. So you'd have gangs of hooligans. Imagine gangs of Australian hooligans. What could be more terrifying beating people up for voting against what they wanted. And eventually the Australian authorities were like, this is idiotic. Let's just have people vote in private and no one can see what you're voting for and is nobody's business. And that was such a good idea that within about forty years. Basically every English speaking country in the world adopted it, America,

Great Britain, et cetera. In fact, it was a centerpiece of Democrat messaging this election cycle. They had all these ads out showing women in Republican coded areas saying, ladies, you don't need to do what your husband says. You can vote for Kamala Harris. You're in. It's your vote. You don't even need to tell your husband. It'll just be our little secret. And it's these women voting at

a at a secret ballot boot. It's like the Democrats acknowledge the superiority of this method of voting because it keeps you totally free from undue influence, unlike, for example, vote by mail, where presumably it's a husband and wife in their home, like, hey, you're gonna fill out your ballot, let's fill out our ballots or I mean, the secret

ballot gives you more security than vote by mail. So this notion that Republicans are anti democratic because they want some kind of limits on Hey, I don't think we should be accepting vote by mail ballots that are undated. Hey, I don't think we should be accepting vote by mail ballots that are arriving well after election day. Hey, I think we need to ensure that the signatures on these match up. Hey, I think people should present some kind of id to ensure that they're actually eligible to vote,

that they're actually citizens of legal age. Hey, I think we should have a registration that happens more than one day before the election, just again to ensure that the correct people are voting. That is deemed to be undemocratic. No, the norm in America is a registered voter voting in person at their precinct. Anything else at a secret ballot. Anything else that's outside of that is a concession, an extension, and if you're going to do it, you have to

follow the rules. But again, what Democrats have set up in California is an institutionalized way for them to basically cheat with this whole curing ballot system, which in any other context people would just say this is completely ridiculous. When we return, the city has been cracking down on smoke shops for the last year. Here are the results.

Next on the John Girardi Show. One pet peeve of mine, as someone who read a little bit of American history, I won't say I'm an American history buff or anything. But one of the things that sort of annoys me is kind of the baby boomer accepted wisdom about Prohibition, And I don't know that it's even baby boomer accepted wisdom.

Might have been even pre baby Boomer accepted wisdom. Prohibition was the era in American life where, for the results of a constitutional amendment, alcohol sales were largely restricted throughout the United States of America, and this resulted in a number of criminal enterprises of bootlegging, of trying to illegally transport alcohol into the United States in order to continue

selling alcohol to people. The concept of speakeasease and all kinds of you know, it's you know, subterfuge, illeg you know, quasi illegal legal slash illegal facilities where people would go to get a drink became fairly widespread, or at least that's the perception we have. And people tend to take the historical position that prohibition was silly. It was just a bunch of dumb Christians who came up with this stupid idea, and it was never enforceable, and so many

people violated it. It's an example of bad law, and it was it was not good. Now, from a historical perspective, I think that's a little narrow minded. Let's remember prohibition passed as a constitutional amendment. You know how hard it is to amend the constitution. You know how much widespread, near universal public opinion in favor of something you need to have before something can be passed as a constitutional amendment.

You need two thirds of both houses of Congress and then three quarters of all the state legislatures to agree on something. So huge majorities of Americans thought this was a good idea because rates of alcoholism in this country in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds were astonishingly high. The number of guys who were just total

dropouts from society because of alcoholism. It was unfathomable how widespread alcoholism was in this country and the kinds of social reformers who were fighting against it, many of whom were women, by the way, I mean that there were you know, let's also remember that with widespread male alcoholism

came widespread female subjugation, abuse, et cetera. And this was in the same era that the that women's suffrage was becoming a big deal, and the same kind of movements that led to women getting the right to vote via the nineteenth Amendment also led to prohibition. It also led to other kinds of like efforts to cleanse government or

to get to ensure more government honesty and transparency. Some of the Progressive era reforms in state governments, such as state recall mechanisms for recalling public officials who were clearly corrupt, ballot initialatives to bypass what people viewed as corrupt state legislatures, have the people directly vote on legislation referenda to basically try to repeal, have a popular vote by the people

to repeal something that the state legislature had passed. California adopted all of these measures, So prohibition was actually thought reasonably by the American people to be a really important thing, and rates of alcoholism did drop drastically. The accepted normalcy of alcoholism dropped drastically during the Prohibition era. So I'm not here to say prohibition was perfect, but there was a lot of good that was accomplished by it. Well.

I think having a more balanced understanding of the marijuana issue would be helpful for people because the narrative that the dominant sort of libertarian and liberal mindset has been is see, California has outlawed marijuana for so much and there's just everyone's still smoking weed anyway. There's a underground market, so we need we just need to legalize it. And if we legalize marijuana, all these problems will go away.

And marijuana legalization has always been sort of pitched by its advocates as it's going to solve all these problems. We won't have this underground, illegal black market and all the negative stuff that's associated with it, the crime, the cartels, the this, the that. No, if we have a legal marijuana market, we just bring this black market out into the light, have everyone purchase, sell, use marijuana legally. Then we won't have this illegal market. And guess what, we

can tax it. We can generate government revenue. And that was always the big selling point for state and local governments. Why state and local governments over time and more and more state have tended to support legalized marijuana. Why does it happen? It's not rocket science. The federal government can borrow money, they can deficit spend, they can go into the red. They just kind of keep ongoing. But state

and local governments can't. State and local governments eventually have to balance their budgets, and as a result, state and local governments are always desperately greedy and acquisitive for new forms of revenue, new sources of revenue where they don't have to impose more taxes on an unwilling populace who will vote them out of office. That this is a dynamic that is always the case. It is true of local governments and state governments across you know, from sea

to shining sea. And this is why local governments will tie themselves into knots to come up with some dumb libertarian rationals. Oh, you, adults will be adults, and they're going to smoke weed. They're already smoking weed anyway, so we might as well make some money off of it. Well, what's happened in California, and specifically in Fresno that's entirely predictable. Is imagine this. Imagine if prohibition had ended and they still had a bunch of illegal speakeasies operating all over

the place. That's basically what's happened. We have legalized marijuana shops. Okay, there are legal marijuana shops. You can get a license to open a marijuana shop. There is legally purchasable marijuana. But guess what, potheads off and don't have a lot of money, and you know what's cheaper than taxed legal marijuana,

not taxed illegal marijuana. And so instead of going to a legal dispensary, what's happened, Well, smoke shops, which I'm sure you've all seen as you drive around, these weird smoke shops that provide various kinds of smoking quote paraphernalia, have been open and operating, gazillions of them all over Fresno. And basically what these businesses were doing is selling pot illegally out the back. In fact, the black market in non legal marijuana in California is a six billion dollar

a year industry. So congratulations for solving the problem of illegal black market marijuana. Say, oh, marijuana legalization hasn't solved that problem one iota. It's still very very very much a real problem, a real ongoing problem. Now here's the story in GV wire. Basically, the city of Fresno about a year ago to say that this is ridiculous. We need to crack down on these smoke shops. They are blights on the city. People are doing crime, they're basically

hot beds for crime. People are selling pot illegally in the back. Rob Bonta, the Attorney General of California has been trying to crack down on this again. Everyone's trying to desperately to prop up the failure that is marijuana legalization. Fresno Code Enforcement is a piece in GV wire by Edward Smith. Fresno Code Enforcement has issued five million dollars in citations, found hundreds of pounds of illegal marijuana, and

uncovered gambling operations, weapons, and evidence of human trafficking. After a year of inspecting city smoke shops also discovered eleven illegal cannabis cultivation sites and dangerous chemicals seeping into water systems. Staff with the Frame has No City Attorney's Office presented the program's results at a Fresno City Council meeting on Thursday. With support from the State Attorney General's Office, Fresno Code Enforcement teamed with city police and fire to inspect one

hundred smoke shops throughout the city. According to the presentation, all the smoke shops inspected, seventy nine percent had illegal cannabis. Well seventy nine percent that we know about ninety four percent had illegal tobacco, and all of them had code violations such as illegal modifications or dangerous electrical upgrades. Fourteen of the inspected smoke shops have closed down. City attorney Andrew Jans said the program has made the city safer.

The big reason why we're doing this is to eliminate the underground black market for cannabis use in the city, said Jans during the meeting. We know that if we eliminate the black market, it will have a direct positive impact on legitimate cannabis operators to generate revenue and by extension, the City of Fresno generating sales tax revenue. I don't know, Andrew, I'm not as I mean the in theory, it's if people have no black market options to go to, they

will go to legal dispensaries to buy their pot. I don't know that you're going to get around this dynamic though. When we return how I just think the entire marijuana movement was nonsense and how there's some COVID experiences to learn that shed light on that. That's next on The John Dibardy Show. During COVID, one of the interesting things we learned was the ways in which medical research can

be politicized and sort of shaded towards favored outcomes. I think one of the interesting things we saw was that surrounding the use of hydroxychloroquine, which President Trump received when he got COVID in twenty twenty, and he was like, Hey, I think people should use this hydroxychloroquine, and all these

literal sides. The president wants people to drink bleach and after President's a quack and immediately because Trump said he thought it was a good idea ergo hydroxychloro wine was terrible. And one of the things we saw was that with medical research funding in North America that was coming out of Anthony Fauci's sort of division of the National Institutes

of Health. And Fauci has been sort of famous for this for favoring vaccines over treatments, favoring vaccines over sort of favoring what he views as preventative vaccines over treatments

for diseases that already happened. And thus that that being his strategy, and he having such influence and oversight for American medical research over the last decades, that has been where all the research was so most of the North American studies about hydroxychloric wine were negative, but European studies in places not under the influences of Anthony Fauci were

much more positive towards it. Does anyone ever stop to wonder if all the sort of stuff that was pushed out about marijuana, all the stuff pushed out, Oh, marijuana is not habit for me, and now marijuana is actually not that bad for you, and blah blah blah blah blah, and here it's actually not that bad of a thing, and here's all the reasons why, here's all the research.

Is anyone ever stopped to question that research. One side of the pro marijuana debate had nothing to gain except the Christian virtue of saying, hey, this is bad for you and the health urge of saying this is bad for you. The other side had a whole multi billion dollar industry that they were thinking they could get in on the ground floor of. So where do you think most of the money went, More of the venture capital went, more of the money to help fund the research went.

I guess I just wouldn't be shocked if all of that pro legalize marijuana research, The research that the legal marijuana side cited if maybe there was something to it that that was going to be the favorite outcome all along, when really marijuana is worse for you than people think. That'll do it. John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk