Election matters are not golden out in sunny California. Thanks to their ‘Top Two’ primary any voter that didn’t want to support a Democrat for U.S. Senate was disenfranchised. Over 2 million Californians who went to the polls left that office blank on their ballot. Republicans had no hope of their candidate winning the state’s electoral votes, but to add insult to injury if Trump had won it wouldn’t have counted because he had 108 electors for 55 electoral votes. Secretary of State Alex Padilla did such a poor job that he is being sued to make sure the next presidential election isn’t botched like this one was.

California did not finalize it’s election results until Friday, Dec. 16th, the last business day before the Electoral College was to meet on the 19th. The state terms the results are recorded in the statement of vote as official, but what is sent to the federal government to be read and recorded in the U.S. Senate is the Certificate of Ascertainment certified by the Governor. If you compare these two documents you will find some glaring discrepancies.

Socialist Equality Party nominee and declared write-in candidate Jerry White is shown as receiving a total of 7 votes. Granted, with other socialists such as Gloria La Riva and Bernie Sanders as options, Jerry was fighting a losing battle for those votes, but as a declared write-in he had to have 55 people agree to be his electors. Surely more than seven of them would write him in even if no one else did, right? Well, of course they would. The statement of vote shows that 84 ballots were cast for ol’ Jerry. In fact, every write-in candidate is shorted in the numbers sent to Washington. Of Bernie Sanders’ 79,341 votes only 12,108 are reported to the nation’s capitol. Evan McMullin sees his total diminished from 39,596 down to 7,194. Mike Maturen and Laurence Kotlikoff are similarly short-changed. Now it’s certainly true that these numbers are academic. The difference won’t change anything, so no one is really gaining or being harmed. So we can’t attribute the errors to malfeasance or corruption, leaving us with only incompetence to blame.

Sanders gets 12,108 on the Certificate of Ascertainment, but 79,341 on the Statement of Vote

What makes even less sense is that the Certificate of Ascertainment lists Donald Trump twice. He was nominated as the Republican candidate and as the candidate of the American Independent Party, the last remnant of the Dixiecrats that supported George Wallace in 1968. In the official results sent to Washington, D.C., Trump is credited with 4,483,810 votes to his GOP slate of electors and then with another 4,483,810 votes for his AIP slate of electors. Ron Gold and Thomas Hudson are on both lists and if the document was taken at face value would appear to have received 8,967,620 votes to be electors. That would be over 200,00 more than any of Hillary Clinton’s electors received which should entitle those two men to enroll in the Electoral College. Obviously the state of California is counting the same votes twice. Had Padilla listed Trump twice on the ballot, once for the GOP and once for the AIP, then all of his votes would either count for one slate or the other but not both. Had Padilla insisted the two parties submit a mutually agreeable slate then Trump could have been listed once with the proper number of electors(although the GOP wouldn’t cooperate with the AIP who sought to do that without direction from Padilla). The Secretary of State could also, after having accepted the AIP’s list of electors, told the California Republican Party that he couldn’t also accept their list which was submitted late anyway. Alex Padilla inexplicably accepted both lists, a total of 108 electors for one ballot line for 55 electoral positions. Thus, all 4,483,810 votes for Donald Trump in California were overvotes and technically invalid.

One may make the claim that by virtue of being recorded on the official results sent to Washington those votes for Trump must be valid, but basic math errors and verifiable discrepancies with the official(a word that is known to the state of California to not have any real meaning) statement of vote indicate that such a claim is dubious at best.

California Republicans, if you feel like your votes didn’t count for anything, you’re right.