Fact Check: Investigating Claims of a Dog Voting in California Election

California Woman Faces Felony Charges for Registering Dog to Vote in State Elections

A 62-year-old California woman is facing multiple felony charges after allegedly registering her boxer dog to vote and successfully casting ballots in the dog’s name, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s office.

Laura Lee Yourex of Costa Mesa was charged with five felonies, including perjury, procuring a false document, casting ballots when not entitled to vote, and registering a nonexistent person to vote, prosecutors announced in September 2025.

According to the district attorney’s office, Yourex’s dog, Maya, was registered as a voter and had ballots cast in its name during California’s 2021 gubernatorial recall election and the 2022 gubernatorial election. Only the 2021 vote was counted, with the ballot joining the majority of Californians who rejected the effort to recall Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom. The 2022 vote was “challenged and rejected,” prosecutors said.

The unusual case came to light after investigators discovered social media posts that allegedly showed the dog wearing an “I voted” sticker in January 2022. Another post from October 2024 reportedly showed a vote-by-mail ballot addressed to the dog, with a caption stating “Maya is still getting her ballot” despite the animal having died.

Court records indicate the case remains active, with a hearing scheduled for early March 2026. If convicted on all counts, Yourex could face significant penalties, though specific sentencing guidelines weren’t detailed in the prosecutor’s announcement.

According to local television station KABC, Yourex’s legal team has emphasized that their client had no prior criminal record. They shared a statement in which Yourex claimed she “regrets her unwise attempt to expose flaws in our state voting system, intending to improve it by demonstrating that even a dog can be registered to vote.”

The case has attracted attention from elected officials. U.S. Representative Kevin Kiley, a California Republican, referenced the incident during House floor remarks in September 2025, when discussing California’s Proposition 50, a ballot measure concerning congressional redistricting that passed with 64% of the vote.

“To be clear, dogs are not allowed to vote in California. And yet in this case, the animal did,” Kiley stated during his remarks. “So the question we have to ask, Mr. Speaker, is how in the world do we have so few safeguards on our electoral process in California that such a thing could ever happen?”

The incident has fueled ongoing debates about voter registration processes and election security. While some social media users have pointed to the case as evidence of widespread voter fraud, election security experts typically note that prosecuted cases of intentional voter fraud remain statistically rare.

The case received wider attention in February 2026 when Elon Musk, chairman of social media platform X, shared a post about the incident, which then circulated widely online. The Orange County District Attorney’s office has not provided additional public updates on the case beyond their initial announcement.

Voter registration systems vary by state, but typically require personal information including birth date, address, and some form of identification number such as the last four digits of a Social Security number. How Yourex allegedly circumvented these requirements to register her pet remains unclear from publicly available information.

The district attorney’s office has not responded to requests for additional comments on the ongoing case, which serves as a highly unusual example of alleged voter fraud in a state with nearly 22 million registered voters.