A California woman was arraigned on five felony counts this month for illegally registering her dog to vote in 2021 and 2022 elections — and then posting on Facebook a photo of her dog with an “I Voted” sticker and the canine’s mail-in ballot.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer has charged Laura Lee Yourex, 62, of Costa Mesa with “one felony count of perjury, one felony count of procuring or offering a false or forged document to be filed, two felony counts of casting a ballot when not entitled to vote, and one felony count of registering a non-existent person to vote,” according to a statement from the DA’s office.
The woman allegedly cast ballots in the dog’s name “Maya Jean Yourex” in the 2021 recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom and the 2022 primary election. The dog’s vote was successfully counted in the 2021 recall but was rejected in the 2022 primary, according to prosecutors.
It has not been revealed how Maya herself voted.
President Donald Trump recently again repeated his persistent call for the abolishment of vote-by-mail ballots, calling them ripe with “fraud” and “cheating” in a post last month on Truth Social.
Yourex is scheduled to be arraigned on September 9 in a California court. She faces a maximum sentence of six years in state prison if convicted on all counts, prosecutors said.
Even more ill-advised than registering the dog was that Yourex reportedly told an election official what she had done.
According to the district attorney’s office:
On October 28, 2024, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office was contacted by the Orange County Registrar of Voter’s Office about a resident who self-reported that she had registered her dog to vote and had in fact cast a mail-in ballot she received addressed to her dog, Maya Jean Yourex, for the 2021 gubernatorial recall election and the 2022 primary election.
According to the California Elections Code, in order to vote a person must be registered as a voter by filling out and submitting an Affidavit of Registration which includes the voter’s name, residence, mailing address, date of birth, political party preference, and a certification that the voter is a citizen of the United States. The affidavit must be signed under penalty of perjury.
However, proof of residence or identification is not required for Californians to vote in state contests, while proof of residence and registration is requited for first time voters in a federal election.
“As a result, the 2022 primary ballot cast in Maya Jean’s name was challenged and rejected,” prosecutors said.
In another post in October of 2024, Yourex showed a photo of Maya’s dog tag and a vote-by-mail ballot with the caption, “May is still getting her ballot” — even though the dog had previously passed away, prosecutors said.
It appears that even a dead dog, with the help of a vote-by-mail ballot, can cast a fraudulent vote in the State of California.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more
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