Donald Trump claimed that the Democrat Party is involved in 'BIG cheating' in California as slow vote counts delay confirmation of nominees for local and state elections. The President questioned the entire process in the liberal-led state and threatened a federal probe in a post to Truth Social early Thursday morning.
'There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California. Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting DELAY???' Trump wrote.
The most anticipated results are in the California governor's race and Los Angeles mayoral election, where independent Spencer Pratt and Republican Steve Hilton look set to advance to runoffs. However, between the two races, only incumbent Mayor Karen Bass has been confirmed as advancing over 24 hours after the polls closed.
Counties are expected to continue to release results over the next several weeks. The state has a history of substantial vote updates after Election Day that can sometimes shift the outcome of elections as late-arriving mail and drop-off votes are counted.
This is not unusual or unexpected, as the nation’s most populous state is consistently among the slowest to report all its election results. Compare it to a state like Florida, the third-largest, which finished counting its votes four days after Election Day. In 2020, Florida reported the results of nearly 99 percent of ballots cast within a few hours of polls closing.
In California, almost one-third of ballots were uncounted after election night, and the state was making almost daily updates to its count through December 3, a full month after Election Day. California, which has long had a culture of voting absentee, started moving toward all-mail elections last decade.
All-mail systems will almost always prolong the count. Mail ballots require additional verification steps — each must be opened individually, validated and processed — so they can take longer to tabulate than ballots cast in person that are then fed into a scanner at a neighborhood polling place.
In 2016, California passed a bill allowing counties to opt in to all-mail elections before instituting it statewide on a temporary basis in 2020 and enshrining it in law in time for the 2022 elections. In recent years, the thousands of California voters who drop off their mail ballots on Election Day created a bottleneck on election night.
In the past five general elections, California has tabulated an average of 38 percent of its vote after Election Day. Two years ago, in the 2022 midterm elections, half the state’s votes were counted after Election Day. Slower counts have come alongside later mail ballot deadlines. In 2015, California implemented its first postmark deadline, meaning that the state can count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day as long as the Postal Service receives the ballot by Election Day.
The late returns could play a legitimate factor in whether or not the likes of reality star Pratt and former Fox News commentator Hilton get a shot at establishment Democrats. The two are currently in the top two places in the state's 'jungle' system which allows candidates from all parties to run in the primary. If no candidate reaches a majority vote, the top two advance to a November runoff election regardless of party.
This is a developing story.
