President Donald Trump repeated his claim that primary elections in California were rigged on Sunday, as the state continued to count the votes from several key races.
Echoing his false claims about the 2020 presidential election, Trump suggested that the pace of the vote count in the closely watched gubernatorial and mayoral primaries, and Republicans losing ground as mail-in ballots were tallied, was evidence of fraud.
“They are dropping fast because it’s a rigged election,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, referring to Republican candidates losing ground as mail-in ballots were counted. “Four days and they aren’t even close to coming up with… You know why they are doing that? Because they are cheating on the election?” he continued.
When pressed by Meet the Press host Kristen Welker whether he had any evidence for his claims, Trump replied: “All I have to do is look.” He then attacked Welker as “crooked” and “stupid.”
Unsubstantiated claims about the California elections have spread in recent days among Republicans and right-wing commentators.
Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk made similar spurious claims regarding the Los Angeles mayoral race, saying: “They're not even trying hard to hide the fraud anymore.”
Republican commentator Meghan McCain wrote: “For whatever it’s worth, people in my life who have never ever spoken about stolen elections in any capacity are now saying this about California…”
It comes as U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and a Trump appointee, said Friday his office had opened “multiple election fraud investigations” related to California’s elections and sent a prosecutor to the county’s vote-counting center.
Most of the claims of fraud appear to stem from a misunderstanding of how California counts its ballots—and specifically, the time it takes the state to complete its tally.
The state has a unique “jungle” primary system, in which the two candidates with the most votes, regardless of party, advance to the general election. With heavy reliance on mail-in ballots and millions of votes to count accurately, it can take weeks to see the final results of the consequential races.
The primaries will determine which two candidates in the races for both California Governor and Los Angeles mayor will compete in a general election in November. In the crowded field for the California Governor’s race, Biden-era Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has already advanced to the runoff, while Republican and British-American former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Democrat billionaire Tom Steyer are close behind, vying for the second spot. In the race for Los Angeles mayor, incumbent Karen Bass is in the lead with 34.81% of the vote, while the gap between votes for progressive Councilmember Nithya Raman and Republican Spencer Pratt grows tighter.
Here's what to know about how California counts its votes.
Mail-in voting leads to delayed results.
California election officials warned that counting could take longer than expected in the run-up to the vote, and prepared for people to claim the delays were the result of fraud.
Governor Gavin Newsom sent a letter to election officials last month, warning that misinformation could spread if results are delayed.
“We face an assault on our democratic values unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes, and it’s our job to safeguard those values,” Newsom said in the letter.
As of June 5, over 6 million gubernatorial primary ballots have been counted, and an estimated 3 million remain to be processed. On election night, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber confirmed the delayed results are “normal,” and it could take weeks to get final results. “We have a process that by law ensures both voting rights and the integrity of elections, so I would call on all Californians to be patient,” she said.
Mail-in ballots account for around 80% of votes in California, and state law allows ballots to arrive up to seven days after Election Day as long as they are postmarked on Election Day. According to the Secretary of State, about 13 million of the approximately 16 million votes in the 2024 presidential election in California were cast by mail.
Election officials in all of California’s 58 counties then have up to 30 days to count final ballots and the California Secretary of State will certify results on July 10. California is the most populous state in the country and home to 23 million registered voters, and as such, election officials need ample time to count.
The curing process adds more time
In addition to mail-in ballots, the California system has one of the longest “curing” processes in the country, allowing voters to correct ballot issues by re-signing if their signature doesn’t match during verification.
When a ballot contains errors, the state gives voters 22 days to “cure” it—a timeline already cut by the state assembly last year.
California is far from the only state to allow for ballot curing—34 states and the District of Columbia, including battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada are among others that allow for the fixes, which is part of why national elections can similarly take weeks to finalize.
A mirror of 2020 false election fraud claims
While voters of every political affiliation cast ballots by mail, Democrats tend to use them more. Because mail ballots take longer to count than in-person votes, the count tends to shift toward Democrats over time, a phenomenon known as “the blue shift” or “red mirage.”
This pattern has been seized upon by the President and other Republicans to attack mail-in voting. Trump has baselessly characterized the voting tactic as a source of fraud in elections, and claimed without proof that the 2020 election, won by President Joe Biden, was “stolen” from him through mail-in ballots.
A study published by the Brookings Institution in November found that cases of mail-in voting fraud accounted for only 0.000043% of all mail ballots, or roughly four out of every 10 million.
While neither Republican candidate in the two races has outright claimed fraud, both Hilton and Pratt have been critical of the process.
Hilton, Trump’s pick for governor in California, said his team has not seen anything illegal in the primaries, even as he called for an overhaul of the election system.
He called the California ballot counting system “a national and international laughingstock,” but said that he and his team “certainly haven’t seen anything of that nature that would warrant legal action,” according to the Associated Press.
Pratt, meanwhile, shared a meme on X indicating he was confused by the vote-counting process.
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