A 62-year-old woman in Costa Mesa, California named Laura Lee Yourex just got slapped with five felony charges. Her crime? She registered her dog to vote.
The terrifying part isn’t that she did it. The terrifying part is that it worked.
Yourex registered her dog — a golden retriever or similar pooch named Maya Jean Yourex — as a voter in Orange County. Listed the party affiliation as “no party preference,” which honestly is the most California thing a dog has ever done. The registration sailed right through. No flags. No verification. No one at the registrar’s office said, “Hey, this voter’s emergency contact is a veterinarian.”
Maya voted in the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election. The ballot was counted. An actual dog participated in an actual election in the largest state in the country, and the system processed it like it was Tuesday.
Welcome to election integrity in California, folks.
Now, Yourex says she did this as a test — to expose how laughably easy it is to commit voter fraud in the Golden State. Her attorney, Jaime Coulter, put out a statement saying she “sincerely 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.”
And you know what? She proved her point spectacularly. She registered a dog. The dog voted. The vote counted. Mission accomplished. Vulnerability exposed. System embarrassed.
So naturally, the state is throwing the book at HER.
Five felony charges: perjury, filing a forged document, registering a non-existent person, and two counts of casting a ballot when not entitled. She faces up to six years in state prison. For a dog. Named Maya.
(Maya, by the way, had already passed away by the time the second ballot showed up in the mail. The registrar’s office was still sending ballots to a dead dog. But sure, the WOMAN is the problem here.)
Yourex even self-reported the whole thing to the Orange County Registrar of Voters. She didn’t hide. She didn’t cover her tracks. She called them up and essentially said, “Hey, I registered my dog and she voted. You should probably fix that.” She posted on social media showing Maya’s mail-in ballot with the caption “Maya is still getting her ballot.”
Bob Page, the Orange County Registrar, responded by saying, “We take voter fraud very serious.” Oh, do you? Because a dog got through your system, Bob. A four-legged, tail-wagging, fire-hydrant-sniffing DOG got registered, received a ballot, and had her vote counted in a statewide election. And you didn’t catch it. SHE told YOU.
Here’s where it gets even better. Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen proposed a common-sense idea: cross-reference dog license records with voter files to catch suspicious registrations. Brilliant, right? Simple database check. A golden retriever probably shouldn’t be on the voter rolls.
Supervisor Katrina Foley shot it down, saying she didn’t “support what I think is an anti-democratic way to try to test our system.”
Anti-democratic? ANTI-DEMOCRATIC? You know what’s anti-democratic? When a dog votes! When a dead dog keeps receiving ballots! When the entire registration system has fewer security checks than a library card application!
But checking dog licenses against voter rolls? That’s the threat to democracy. Unbelievable.
This is California in a nutshell. You can’t own a gas stove. You can’t use a plastic straw. You can’t water your lawn. But your golden retriever? Registered voter. No questions asked.
The Left has spent years telling us that voter fraud doesn’t exist. It’s a “myth.” It’s a “conspiracy theory.” Anyone who questions election integrity is an “election denier” who wants to “suppress votes.”
A dog voted. In a real election. And the vote counted.
Since the 2024 presidential election, 175,000 names have been removed from Orange County’s voter files alone — due to relocation, death, or ineligibility. That’s one county. In one state. And we’re supposed to believe the system is airtight?
Laura Yourex is a registered Republican with no criminal record. She’s 62 years old and never been in trouble with the law. She did something dumb, yes. But she did it to prove a point that California officials have been denying for years: the voter registration system is a joke.
She proved it. They’re punishing her for it. And they’re STILL not fixing the system that let a dog vote.
Maya Jean Yourex couldn’t be reached for comment, on account of being a dog. But if she could talk, she’d probably say what we’re all thinking: “If it’s this easy for me to vote, how many non-dogs are doing it too?”
The dog would’ve voted Republican anyway. That’s probably why they’re pressing charges.
