Newsom is responding to election concerns by restricting scrutiny rather than increasing transparency.
As election integrity debates continue to rage across California, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck believes state leaders are making a dangerous mistake: treating skepticism as a threat instead of addressing the concerns behind it.
“What’s happening in California is dangerous, and … if you can be reasonable and you can listen without the lens of your tribe, there is a way to an answer here. But nobody seems, especially on the left, nobody seems to want to actually fix the problem,” Glenn says.
“And so what do they want to do? They want to shut you up,” he adds, explaining that Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that “said fines and jail time [for] three years if you are interfering with the election.”
“This particular penalty is aimed at people who physically walk off with boxes of ballots,” Glenn explains. “Listen to the language around it.”
“The governor wrote a letter telling his officials to ‘count fast’ so the ‘election lies’ don’t take hold. Stop and think about that for a second. Wait a minute. The chief executive of the largest state in the union has appointed himself the man who decides which doubts are lies,” he says.
“And in the same season, his allies pass a provision that tells election observers they may no longer challenge the signatures on the ballot they’re watching get counted. So, they didn’t criminalize your doubt. They did something quieter,” he continues. “They turned down the lights in the room where the counting happens. And you’re told it’s a conspiracy theory to ask, ‘Why did it get so dark?’”
Glenn explains that a glaring issue with this is that the government cannot ever “be the arbiter of truth.”
“Especially when the question on the table is about the government itself. You cannot let the accused run the evidence room,” he says.
“You’re accusing California of having fraud, and what do they do? They say, ‘No, we’re in charge.’ Right? You’re the one that everybody’s saying is causing the fraud, and they’re saying, ‘No, you can’t question because there’s no fraud,’” he continues. “That doesn’t help anything.”
“This is not a conservative idea or a liberal idea. It’s just how you keep a free people free,” he adds.
