On Monday afternoon, a reporter asked Donald Trump why, if he was so worried about fraud, he was telling his supporters to vote by mail. Trump said he had "no choice because a lot of people want to vote by mail."

He then launched into his usual baseless allegations of fraud. Pressed to say where this fraud had taken place, he told reporters to "start off by taking a look at California."

With the midterms less than a month away, we have become sadly accustomed to Trump's false attacks on free and fair elections. But his focus on California is more than routine. It is both a decade-long fixation and a roadmap for his plans in 2026.

Weeks after winning in 2016, Trump blamed "serious voter fraud" in California for his loss of the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. He has repeated the charge in every election cycle since.

In 2019, he claimed California had "admitted to a million [illegal] votes" in a court settlement. It hadn't. In 2020, his false claims about California's mail ballots earned him Twitter's first-ever fact-check label on one of his posts. In 2024, he told Dr. Phil that "if Jesus Christ came down and was the vote counter, I would win California."

This year, the rhetoric has escalated into action. Trump has called California "one of the most dishonest states" and told Fox News that its "mail-in votes are a fraud."

On June 5, three days after the state's primary, Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, announced that his office was conducting "multiple election fraud investigations." Weeks later, Trump bragged that he had personally phoned the "U.S. attorney in California" with a request: "Do me a favor. Take a look."

Around the same time, Jay Clayton, then the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, went on CNBC to question California's voting rules, claiming they created "an opportunity for fraud." Days later, Trump nominated him to be director of national intelligence.

Trump's obsession with California isn't just about the fact that he has repeatedly lost the state in landslides, or that it is reliably controlled by Democrats. It's that he sees California as the biggest obstacle to stopping a Democratic wave in November.

Last year, California redrew its congressional map to offset Trump's push to gerrymander Texas. At the time, the exchange was seen as roughly a five-seat gain for each party. But from a purely partisan standpoint, Gavin Newsom and the Democrats have clearly gotten the better end of the deal.

California's 52 congressional seats loom over the entire midterms. With Democrats set to win all but four of them, the state will necessarily supply the margin needed to retake the House.

Trump knows that any attempt to undermine the midterm results must contend with California. That is why he began laying the groundwork during the primary.

It is why his allies continue to attack the state's elections today. And most importantly, it is why we are almost certain to see a full-scale effort to cast doubt on California's results in November.

Several aspects of California's voting process are perennial targets. More than 80 percent of the state's voters cast their ballots by mail. In addition to drop boxes, which the GOP has demonized, the state permits third-party ballot collection. Republicans have attacked this practice for years while also using it themselves.

Most significantly, the state counts mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day as long as they are received within seven days after the election. Republicans attack this grace period, but it is hardly unusual.

Washington state allows 21 days, while Alaska, Maryland and Washington, D.C., allow 10. Even Republican-led states like Mississippi, West Virginia and Texas count ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive afterward, albeit with shorter deadlines.

In June, the Supreme Court upheld these grace periods against a challenge by the Republican National Committee. My law firm and I litigated that case and won, 5-4.

Still, California takes longer to count its votes than most states because of its sheer size and the complexity of its ballots and rules. Ballots cast closer to the election, and thus counted after Election Day, tend to favor Democrats. This shift makes the state an easy target for Trump's false claims of fraud.

Yet even by Trump's own faulty logic, there is no reason to believe a slow count is a sign of fraud. Indeed, it's easy to imagine Trump crying fraud if the count were, in his estimation, too fast.

Even some of his allies concede the point. Essayli himself has disputed that the slow count alone is evidence of cheating. And during the primary count, Steve Hilton, Trump's endorsed candidate for governor, said he hadn't "seen anything" that raised concerns about the validity of the results.

The bottom line is that Trump will attack voting in California for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: That's where the votes are, and the House majority with them.

So, when California's count stretches into mid-November and the totals keep moving, remember: That isn't fraud. It's evidence of what scares Trump most — a free and fair election.