What happens when you combine California‘s lax criminal “justice” system with an electoral system focused on mailing ballots to voters? You get crime rings that jeopardize trust in the entire electoral system.
San Jose has mail thieves on the loose, with a group of criminals evidently getting a hold of postal master keys to raid community mailboxes. Community mailbox thefts are up 87% since the COVID-19 pandemic, with thieves stealing master keys to steal mail from those community mailboxes, in hopes of taking people’s checks, new credit cards, or anything else of value. A homeowner in one community set up a surveillance camera to catch the thieves in the act, watching as a group of them launched organized raids of these mailboxes (with a lookout), sometimes even in broad daylight.
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The postal service can’t keep up, claiming that it doesn’t have the funds to change the locks and replace the keys. The result is that community mailboxes up and down the Bay Area are compromised. In September, four people in Los Altos Hills were arrested with stolen mail, including stolen credit cards and IDs, along with burglary tools and methamphetamine. Those alleged criminals had unopened mail from multiple surrounding areas, including San Jose and Fremont. Another suspect was arrested in Redwood City last week, with him (or her) alone in possession of financial information and ID cards belonging to more than 20 different people.
This would be a disastrous problem anywhere, as crimes involving finances or identity theft can ruin victims’ lives (and should result in life or near-life sentences for the criminals who commit them). But it is a particular problem in California, where the state’s elections rely heavily on mail. In the 2024 elections, according to California’s secretary of state, nearly 7 million people voted by mail in primary elections. That was more than 88% of the state’s electorate. In the general election, nearly 81% of voters voted by mail, a total of more than 13 million people.
This is not an unheard-of problem in California. In Los Angeles County last year, one man found almost a dozen mail-in ballots stuffed in a storm drain, likely being discarded by mail thieves who were hoping to steal checks and credit cards. In 2021, 300 unopened mail-in ballots were found in a car in Torrance (along with a sleeping felon) during the recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Just this year, 135 registered voters had their ballots compromised in break-ins of four community mailboxes in Yolo County, and Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies found 99 ballots during a sweep of a homeless encampment.
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California already takes a month to count votes in elections as a result of its reliance on mail-in ballots. With criminals running around emboldened by soft California laws (and perhaps unaware that stealing mail is a federal offense), California’s weak justice system has found another way to undermine trust in elections. These mail thieves have brought a new meaning to “stolen elections.”
Now, just imagine a California that follows Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell’s dream of voting by text message.
