In California, Democrats are getting alarmed.

Their fair-haired boy, Gov. Gavin Newsom, once the great hope of the Democrat party, is losing momentum fast on his recall referendum.  He's put out hysterical ads denouncing the recall as a white supremacist plot and a dread Republican-led takeover.  He's studiously ignoring, or now lamenting, things like California's homeless crisis, its monster lockdowns, its failing schools, its powerful teachers' unions, its illegals surge, its mismanaged unemployment benefits, its residents fleeing, and other malfeasance, saying it's just Republicans on the loose.

These ads don't seem to be working well for him.  Polls show that plainspoken commonsense black libertarian/conservative Larry Elder is rising in the polls fast.  He's a recognizable face, and his views are pure Reagan-country tradition.  Another replacement candidate on the ballot, 29-year-old white real estate developer Kevin Paffrath, a purported Democrat who doesn't sound like one, is higher in at least one poll than even Elder. 

And the really damning news shows that Hispanic voters really, really don't like this leftist perfumed princeling at all.  Hispanic voters haven't gathered behind a single candidate so far, but an Inside Politics/Emerson poll shows that 54% are definitely sure they don't want Newsom.

Adding to the Newsom woes, the press, which is in his tree, keeps reporting that Newsom has nothing to worry about, he's got it in the bag.  In this case, it's bad for Newsom, as it's sure to damp Democrat turnout.  That's prompted a lot of screeching ads, from the likes of Elizabeth Warren and other coevals, warning Democrats of Armageddon if they ignore this.

What are they doing now?  It looks like placing their hopes in rigging. 

According to Trending Politics:

California's recall election may be an exercise in futility unless voters put in safeguards to stop a downloadable ballot system from leading to ballot harvesting in order to keep unpopular Governor Gavin Newsom in office.

The "Remote Accessible Ballots for Eligible Voters" is being touted by California Secretary of State Shirley Weber as a way for voters to download ballots in the "comfort of their own home."

 What could go wrong?

What's bad here is that this makes cheating and ballot-box stuffing a lot easier for fraudsters.  Do a lot of us think the California vote was stolen from President Trump in 2020?  Yes, we do, and it turns out the downloadable ballots were apparently around even in 2020, as were mass-mailed ballots, whether a voter wants one or not, done with uncleaned voter rolls.  It goes against all fair election standards, and Trending Politics reports that international observers find this alarming.

This is far from the only mechanism they've used to try to rig the election.  It's not just junk-mail ballots, zero-ID voting, and ballot-harvesting, which are all a fraudster's dream.  They tried to keep Larry Elder off the ballot at all, using a made-up technicality over records disclosure that was laughed out of court.  It signals that they fear Elder and will try anything to keep their one-party blue dictatorship entrenched in power. 

With no serious arguments to make for voters, they've resorted to fear and rigging.  But with momentum against them now, in a great voter surge of discontent, it's possible it might still fail.  When the numbers are big enough, they can't cheat.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.