California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton told Newsmax on Friday that years of Democrat leadership have left the Golden State with a broken election system and the nation's highest cost of living, pledging to restore election integrity and make the state affordable again if elected governor.

Hilton said on "National Report" that Californians are ready for a "major overhaul," arguing that Democrat policies have driven up taxes, housing, and energy costs and that California's election system has undermined public confidence.

His comments came after nearly 150,000 mail-in ballots were rejected in California's June primary, with state officials citing late arrivals, postmark issues, and signature mismatches as the leading causes.

"If you elect me, we're going to make some changes on this," Hilton said. "There's something else that is so important, which is our cost of living. That's the driving issue that everyone wants to see fixed here in California. That's what I'm going to fix."

He added: "On elections, it's just another example of the incompetence and ideology coming together."

Hilton blamed California's universal mail-ballot system and outdated voter rolls for creating what he called a flawed election process.

"When you're moving to this system of sending mail ballots out to everyone, and then you've got voter rolls which are years and years out of date, have millions of incorrect names on them — either people who've moved out of state, who have died," he said. "That's what we're dealing with in California."

The state should return to absentee voting by request, Hilton said, instead of automatically mailing ballots to every registered voter.

"The answer is to get back to some common sense," he said. "People who can't get to the polls need to have absentee ballots, but you should be able to do that by request only, instead of this sending ballots out, millions of wrong ballots floating around.

"Almost everyone in California has a story of ballots arriving at their house addressed to people who no longer live there. It's just a recipe for disaster."

He also took aim at California's ballot-counting rules.

"You don't even need a postmark for your ballot to count," he said. "You can hand-write the date. You can literally backdate your ballots. That's how crazy it's gotten."

Beyond election reform, the GOP candidate said reversing California's affordability crisis would be the top priority of his administration, arguing that working families and small businesses have paid the price for years of government expansion.

"We're leading a movement for the people who have been crushed by this political machine that's been in power for so long," Hilton said. "It has given us the highest poverty rate in the country, the highest unemployment rate, the highest cost of living by far.

"And guess who's hurt the most by that? Working people, small businesses. They've been completely abandoned by the Democratic Party, and that's who I'm fighting for."

Hilton said his platform would lower gas prices to "$3," cut electric bills in half, make the first "$150 grand" of income tax-free and reduce government regulations to lower housing and business costs.

"My plan is very simple: to make our state Calaffordable," he said. "We need a complete change of direction."

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