‘I did not find them’: GOP official in Calif. apologizes for fraud claims

As voter fraud allegations run rampant within the Republican Party, the head of Marin County’s party made an unexpected apology last week for claims he made about dead people voting in the county last year.

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John Turnacliff, the chairman of the Marin County Republicans, claimed in February that dozens of dead people voted on Proposition 50, last year’s redistricting measure, and he requested that the county’s registrar of voters investigate. 

But during an open comment period during a county meeting last Tuesday, Turnacliff admitted that he was wrong after no election fraud was found.

“I’m here today to retract that statement that I made a few months ago as far as those voters being on the roll. I did not find them,” he said. “I apologize to the Board of Supervisors and to the registrar’s office and to the registrar for any angst and consternation that could have put on you since then.”

The apology comes as President Donald Trump continues to wage a war on mail-in voting, a practice experts say is overwhelmingly safe but that Trump has said is rife with fraud. Trump doubled down in March when he issued an executive order requiring the United States Postal Service to verify citizenship for the over 50 million ballots it sends to voters in major elections. The order is now being challenged, as critics say it’s impossible and illegal for the USPS to verify voters’ citizenship without disenfranchising some voters. The Supreme Court is currently deliberating the issue. 

Others who have alleged election fraud like Rudy Giuliani and former Trump official Jenna Ellis have retracted their claims in court cases, but Turnacliff’s public admission is a rare instance of a Republican apologizing for an election fraud claim without a court loss forcing them to do so.

Natalie Adona, the county’s registrar of voters, told SFGATE in February after Turnacliff made that request that she was not required by law to look into an inquiry like his but decided to anyway in an effort to maintain trust within the community. She said at the time that she found “four or five” deceased people on the voter roll, but there was no record of them voting after they died. Adona said that once someone dies, they are removed from the voter roll.

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Turnacliff said that when he made the allegation, he believed 80 deceased people were on the voter roll and that half of them had voted in the November election. After the fact, he said this week during a public comment period that he was able to track down those people, their ancestry and death records and did not find any evidence to support his accusation that they voted in last year’s special election. 

The stakes are as high as ever, as the November midterm elections will be consequential as far as which party could retain or seize control of the Senate and the House of Representatives. 

In 2020, mail-in voting was particularly prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic when many people were quarantined at home, according to Pew Research. Since then, the number of mail-in voters has dropped slightly, but a significant number of voters still cast their votes by mail instead of in person. Washington, D.C., and eight states, including California, allow all voters to use mail-in voting. Nearly one-third of American voters cast their ballots by mail in 2024 and 2022.

In California, a Republican-led effort to target supposed voting fraud is making its way onto the ballot this November. Proposition 39, which is supported by the California Republican Party, would require every voter to present a government-issued photo ID at the polls and also require election officials to verify that voters are U.S. citizens. Over $15 million has been put into the campaign to support the initiative.