On Tuesday, 62-year-old Laura Lee Yourex from Costa Mesa made her first court appearance after being charged with five felonies for registering her dog, Maya, to vote in two California elections. Prosecutors say Maya’s “ballot” was successfully counted during the 2021 gubernatorial recall before being rejected in the 2022 primary.
Yourex’s attorney read a statement outside the Santa Ana courthouse, framing her actions as misguided but not malicious. “Laura Yourex sincerely regrets her unwise attempt to expose flaws in our state voting system,” attorney Jaime Coulter said. “She never hid from responsibility, and in fact self-reported what she did to the Registrar of Voters.”
The five felonies Yourex now faces include perjury, registering a fictitious person, and casting ballots when not entitled to vote. Her arraignment has been postponed until December, but if convicted, she could spend up to six years in prison.
Inside Orange County government, the case quickly became a flashpoint. At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, some officials seized on the news to demand a broader review of voter rolls.
Registrar of Voters Bob Page emphasized that the system ultimately caught the fraudulent registration and pointed out that his office referred the matter to prosecutors as soon as it was reported. “We take voter fraud very seriously,” Page said, noting that 175,000 names have been removed from voter files since last year for reasons ranging from relocation to death.
Still, the story is already being used to bolster claims about vulnerabilities in California’s elections. Supervisor Katrina Foley stated, “I don’t support what I think is an anti-democratic way to test our system. People should be held accountable for that.”
Court filings confirm Yourex is a registered Republican. Maya, however, was registered with no party preference.
What began as an alleged attempt to prove a point has left Yourex with the possibility of years in prison and a county divided over what her actions really reveal: a crack in the system, or a system doing its job. Either way, one woman’s stunt with her dog has become a test case for how seriously California treats even the smallest instance of voter fraud.
