Trump Team Touts Voter Registration Numbers

The Trump campaign is touting voter registration numbers to argue that polls aren’t showing what will happen on Election Day.

With President Donald Trump behind in national polls as well as most recent battleground-state polls, campaign manager Bill Stepien told reporters Monday that new voter registration numbers in key states show an enthusiasm edge that’s not being captured.

“Voter registration trends are simply not being reflected,” he said in a call with reporters.

Republicans have cut into the Democrats’ voter registration advantage in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania in recent months.

Stepien also cited Arizona, where Democrats have cut into the Republicans’ traditional advantage, arguing that the GOP has registered more voters in the last three months. -- Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou

In recent days, Trump has suggested he could win New York and California, while the head of the Illinois Republican Party suggested during the Republican National Convention that the state could be in play.

“We can win in California NOW!” Trump tweeted last week.

But on Monday morning, Trump turned on the three states, tweeting that New York has “gone to hell,” California is “going to hell,” and Illinois “has no place to go.”

“Illinois has no place to go,” he tweeted. “Sad, isn’t it? Vote Trump!”

Trump is currently down 29 points in New York and 32 points in California in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. The most recent poll in Illinois had him down 13 points.

Trump has railed against ballot drop boxes and so-called ballot harvesting, but California Republicans have embraced both in a strategy that may be against state law.

The Orange County Register reports that unauthorized ballot drop boxes have been spotted in Fresno, Los Angeles and Orange County in party offices, candidate headquarters and churches, often with the words “official ballot drop off box” on them.

The Fresno County Republican Party even posted a list of “secure” ballot collection sites on its website that included local businesses, gun shops and its own headquarters.

Neither the locations or the drop boxes themselves are approved by county elections officials, and Secretary of State Alex Padilla said they are against state law, which requires officials follow strict guidelines to establish a chain of custody for ballots in drop boxes.

On Twitter, the California Republican Party has defended the practice, noting that state law allows volunteers and campaign workers to collect ballots and turn them in at polling places.