1) The area of California that's currently on fire voted for Trump, heavily. Gotta love punishing your own people for living in a blue state.
2) That's actually almost completely false. The 53,000 number is from 2012, and was the number of dead people who were registered to vote, NOT the number of dead people who actually voted. Your voter registration is not directly linked to your heartbeat - it takes a bit for news of someone's death to reach the board of elections.
Perhaps I'm not the one whose media sources are misleading?