Opinion
By Michael Hernandez
8/6/25
CALIRED NEWS–Some 112 Ventura County residents attended six workshops between July 23-26 to hear how Election Integrity Project Ca is pursuing federal legislation that will bring about national election reform with Founder and President Linda Paine stating: “Congress needs to act to save the Republic” because “the current electoral system in numerous states lacks the safeguards to guarantee citizens that their rights are protected and their voice is heard.”
California elects 12 percent of the members of the House of Representatives, the highest number of any state and controls 10 percent of the Electoral College votes. As a result, “California’s suspect election results impact every American. In the last 20 years, California has been at the forefront of national reforms that weaken election laws and reduce election integrity,” according to EIPCa.
California election laws have been implemented in multiple states since 2015 and “have led the way to a reduction in state and federal election security nationwide. Such electoral incompetence, at best, or corruption, at worst, impacts the entire nation and subverts the civil rights of all U.S. citizens, regardless of where they reside” states EIPCa.
The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate the manner of House and Senate elections. According to EIPCa, “Congress has the constitutional authority and duty to both override the detrimental law that produces corrupt election results and simultaneously cut off dangerous trends in election laws nationwide.”
EIPCa is submitting to Congress a Proposal for a Federal Election Integrity Bill with 17 key points which include:
- Require absolute transparency of the entire election process.
- Require proof of citizenship to register to vote where the voter lives in the country or overseas.
- Require government-issued Photo Voter ID to register to vote, apply for and submit absentee/mail-in ballots, vote in person, or vote from overseas.
- Resolve the inconsistencies regarding voting from overseas.
- Update the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 passed under President Bill Clinton.
- Update the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 authored by Christopher Dodd and signed into law by President George W. Bush to include consequences for noncompliance “teeth” into its mandates to ensure compliance and monitor proper use of federal funds by state election officials, particularly for proper training of poll workers and ballot processors.
- Create a federally managed program, such as a merged voter database of all 50 states, with citizen oversight to ensure no voter is able to be registered or to vote in more than one state or vote while ineligible.
- Prohibit Top-Two (jungle) primaries.
- Prohibit Rank-Choice voting.
- Limit the number of days of walk-in early voting to a maximum of seven days before Election Day.
- Eliminate no-excuse voting by mail.
- Prohibit most election technology and return to in-person voting with paper ballots and supervised hand-counting at the precinct level.
- Protect the security of the paper ballot by requiring a watermark that cannot be replicated, making it impossible to reproduce extra paper ballots.
- Prohibit “Same Day” registration.
- Prohibit ballots arriving after Election Day from being accepted or counted.
- Prohibit Ballot Harvesting and monitor ballot drop boxes.
- Prohibit pre-registration of minors.
All 17 points are listed in a 38-page proposal that includes over 100 citations. EIPCa provided a draft of the proposal to the U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson at the end of May for review. EIPCa has now completed the “herculean effort” and will be providing the proposal to a Congressional Committee this week. This will be followed up with a release of the legislative proposal to 50 state legislatures.
At the same time, a request for a Congressional hearing concerning California elections will be made that focuses on 14 years of research of the voter rolls at the state and county level resulting in legal actions, as well as the observation of California’s electoral process by over 20,000 citizens in 43 out of 58 counties.
Some of the alarming election irregularities that the EIPCa website point to from the 2022 California election include:
- “California cannot provide an accurate list of who voted in Nov 2022.”
- The nonpartisan watchdog group finds the legally required list of voters exceeds official results by more than 22,210 voters and 43,624 votes “calling into question the validity of the certification of the 2022 election.”
- 21,355 voters had two or three votes credited to their respective Registration ID numbers. If these multi-votes are removed, there were still 22,210 more voters listed than number of votes certified.
- Analyzing the list by county…
- Only one county (Modoc) matched the certified county-level results.
- 32 counties had more votes than certified. Los Angeles County had the bulk of the list’s excess votes and multi-voting.
- 25 counties had fewer votes than the number certified. It is unclear who cast the “missing” certified votes, as the list contains all who voted in the election even if they were subsequently inactivated or cancelled.
On June 28, 2024 Election Integrity Project®California (EIPCa) obtained from the office of the Secretary of State a list of who voted in California’s November 8, 2022 general election. California’s Election Code §2191 provides qualified groups the right to obtain from elections officials a list of each person who voted in previous elections. The list contained each voter’s name, address, birthdate, state Registration ID number, voting method and current registration status (active, inactive, pending, cancelled, etc.) Each Registration ID number in VoteCal is unique, and not duplicated. The list should have been an exact match to the list California certified on December 16, 2022. “It was not! Eligible voters in California should be infuriated!”
EIPCa sent a letter with the findings listed by county and the method of voting to the Secretary of State on September 6, requesting a timely response to several questions, but has never received a response.
“EIPCa calls for Secretary of State Shirley Weber to perform a full and final reconciliation of the votes counted compared to eligible voters who voted and to develop a ‘who voted’ list as mandated by EC §2191 prior to certification of each future election, starting with the November, 2024 Presidential election,” said EIPCa President Linda Paine.
EIPCa has done an analysis of California Legislature Election Law and has concluded: (see Part I: https://www.eip-ca.com/articles/CA_legislator_open_book_pt1.pdf and Part II: https://www.eip-ca.com/articles/CA_legislator_open_book_pt2.pdf.)
“For 30 years, the California legislature has been passing laws that have incrementally undermined the integrity of the election process. As a result, we have a complex, confusing, and highly porous system that begs to be manipulated. Just when we think it cannot get any worse, more proposed laws enter the system and we see they have not yet run out of bad ideas.
“Statewide frustration and national derision focused on California’s inability to provide election results in a timely fashion are finally receiving some attention from the legislature. But they shy away from doing anything meaningful to resolve the situation.
“Unwilling to change the policies that are responsible: 37-day voting period, universal vote by mail, 7-day post-Election Day grace period for ballot arrival, 28-day after Election Day curing period, to name a few.”
“It might seem there is no way to reverse the damage. Is California a lost cause? NO. Now that the agenda (26 page Golden State Agenda with Appendix) that reviews federal laws from 1994 to 2002 and California election laws from 1998 to 2025) is no longer under wraps, there is a way to STOP and REVERSE IT. YOU can help bring sanity back to California.”
- Support EIPCa’s diverse strategy for change by reading and sharing our emails, following our lead, and keeping these efforts healthy through your donations.
- Join the growing number of citizens letting the legislature know they are no longer operating in a vacuum of ignorant citizens. Sign up to participate with California Action for Legislative Accountability (CALA) today.
The California Legislature has “incrementally undermined the integrity of the California election process” by making “election fraud and manipulation even more possible and probable, in part because of their potential for use in a partisan and unbalanced manner.
“But potential for partisanship is not the only element the legislature continues to inject into the system. Often the legislature creates a law that looks good on paper but has no means of enforcement. They often fall short of their responsibility to legislate in a meaningful way that actually represents their constituents and effectively addresses the challenging issues that face the citizens who “elected” them.”
EIP Ventura County Coordinator Gloria Massey Chinea opened each of the six Ventura County workshops held in Oxnard (July 23), Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks (July 24), and Santa Paula and Fillmore (July 26) by recounting her early life in Puerto Rico and her husband (Rolando) growing up in Cuba influenced their involvement in Ventura County since 2015 and working elections since 2016.
“We have 314 days until the California Primary on June 2nd and 467 days until the Nov. 3rd General Elections. We have volunteered to observe and work as pollworkers. This is our civic duty to help my country. When you have lived through communism, it motivates you to do this work. We have trained over 500 people on California election laws.”
EIPCa Founder and President Linda Paine also spoke at the six Ventura County election workshops.
Paine recounted her work in California politics began with the Proposition 8 California ballot initiative that aimed to ban same-sex marriage in the November, 2008 elections by defining marriage as between one man and one woman. The measure passed with 52.4 percent of the vote. However, it was later ruled unconstitutional in August, 2010 and ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court in June, 2013 and their decision allowed same-sex marriages to resume in California.
“You can’t win if you don’t keep fighting,” said Paine. “If not us, then who? If not now, then when? In June 2023, the California State Assembly and Senate voted unanimously to place a repeal of Proposition 8 on the ballot which then passed with 61 percent of the voters approving the repeal, affirming marriage as a fundamental right for all couples (including same-sex).
“Election Integrity Project was formed on Dec. 28, 2010 as a C-corporation,” said Paine. “We began studying electron laws and speaking out in 2011. I was in the right place at the right time. It was providential. Our Southern California Liberty Coalition observed elections in 21 counties that made up 85 percent of the California population in 2012.
“From 2012-2014, we began to identify serious patterns. We sent our data to the California Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Division. In 2015, they agreed with us that there was an election problem and Californians were losing the ability to choose their elected officials.”
Paine recounted how they noticed that 40 percent of all provisional ballots cast nationwide were done in California and she with others began monitoring election fraud.
“We built up our election team to 40 of 58 counties and we had incident reports filed and we were documenting the election process.” Paine said EIPCa was formed as a charitable organization on July 21, 2017.
“We had so much election corruption in 2018. We wanted people to understand that we the people are a Republic not a democracy.”
According to Paine, the movement to pursue federal legislation was precipitated by challenges created by judges blocking lawsuits and EIPCa election integrity efforts.
EIPCa Founder and President Linda Paine can be contacted at (661) 313-5251 or by email at: [email protected]. The EIPCa office is located at 27943 Seco Canyon Rd., #521, Santa Clarita, CA 91350. The EIPAz office is located at 1042 Willow Creed Rd., #A101-479, Prescott, AZ 86301.
More EIPCa History
In 2017, EIPCa retained Judicial Watch to sue the California Secretary of State and the Los Angeles Registrar of Voters for violation of federal voter roll maintenance laws, resulting in the cancellation of millions of ineligible registrations from 2019 to present. In the same year, EIPCa retained the Landmark Legal Foundation.
Landmark Legal Foundation filed four briefs with the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security and in 2020 a legal brief went to the U.S. Supreme Court to assist Arizona in winning its case to retain their anti-ballot harvest law in a 6-3 vote. During the same year, EIPCa challenged 4.5 million vote-by-mail ballots being mailed to addresses of deceased or relocated individuals.
Back in 2019, EIPCa filed legal action in Fresno County in order to review the 2018 ballot envelopes and the remade ballots. In 2020, EIPCa filed legal action against Ventura County for implementing election policies and procedures that superseded California laws allowing citizens to observe elections and make challenges to actions that do not comply with state and federal laws.
In 2021, EIPCa filed legal action against the California Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State and 13 Registrar of Voters (ROVs). This case went to the 9th Circuit of Court of Appeals in 2022. In 2023 and 2024, EIPCa opposed and testified against Califonria’s entrance into the ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center).
On 2024, Advocates for Faith and Freedom filed a Writ of Mandate on behalf of EIPCa regarding election research of California’s 2022 Certified Election Results.
A Writ of Mandate, also known as a writ of mandamus, is a court order that directs a government official or lower court to perform a specific duty that they are legally obligated to do. It is considered an extraordinary remedy used in exceptional circumstances.
Judicial Watch is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law. The Landmark Legal Foundation is a nonprofit conservative legal advocacy group founded in 1976. The President as of 2018 is Richard P. Huchison. Advocates for Faith and Freedom is a nonprofit law firm dedicated to protecting religious liberty and constitutional rights in the courts. Robert Tyler is President and Chief Counsel.
About EIPCA
The Election Integrity Project®California (EIPCa) is a nonpartisan group of U.S. citizen volunteers seeking “to fulfill our duty to actively participate in the governing of our state/country, a government of, by, and for the people, by helping to ensure the integrity of that part of our Republic through which citizens exercise our most fundamental right ~ the right to choose our representatives by fair and honest elections.
“The specific purpose of this corporation is to defend, through education, research and advocacy (including legal action and providing and funding the training of election observers), the civil rights of U.S. citizens to fully participate in the election process under federal and state law.
“California is one of fewer than 30 states with laws protecting the rights of citizens to observe the election process as individuals separate from any efforts associated with a political party. As a result, EIP/EIPCa is able to research the evidence without political influence.”
A U.S. election integrity scorecard released June, 2025 by the Heritage Foundation showed California listed with an overall ranking of 50th based on voter identification implementation, accuracy of voter registration lists, absentee ballot management, vote harvesting/trafficking restrictions, access of election observers and verification of citizenship. Listed in a tie for first was Arkansas and Tennessee.
(See: htps://www.heritage.org/electionscorecard/pages/all-state-scores.html.)
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CaliRed News is a news site oriented toward Making California Red by the 2028 elections through reaching Gen Z (ages 13-28), Hispanics, and Christians with biblical traditional values and their pastors. CaiRed News (founder and senior writer is Mike Hernandez) reports on political, business, community, nonprofit, and church news. CaliRed News is the Christian conservative/constitutional voice of Patriots who will vote into office a new governor in 2026 and “Make California Golden Again” while bringing faith (Prayer Over News Daily) and politics together. Free subscriptions are available by going to: https://substack.com/@calirednews.
Michael Hernandez, is co-founder of the Citizens Journal–Ventura County’s online news service and writes for Citizensjournal.net and MountainTopMedia.com. He is a former Southern California daily newspaper journalist and religion and news editor, writer of “Prayer Over News Daily” on Substack.com, the monthly Election Countdown, and edits the weekly “Stories Speak Volumes.” Mr. Hernandez mentors citizen journalists and can be contacted at mike.ca
