Cartoonist Thomas Nash attributed the following quote to William M. “Boss” Tweed in 1871: “As long as I count the Votes, what are you going to do about it? Say?” The most famous version of this message is more commonly associated with Joseph Stalin: “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” Regardless, the underlying truth is as old as politics itself: those who control the machinery of elections wield enormous power.
Conservatives were delighted on Wednesday morning to see independent firebrand Spencer Pratt defying expectations in the Los Angeles mayoral race. With roughly 63% of the primary vote counted, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass led with 34.8%, while Pratt seemed well on his way to a runoff spot with 30.4%. City Councilwoman Nithya Raman lagged behind at 22.3%, looking unlikely to overcome Pratt’s sizable lead.
But as the vote counting continued, Pratt’s once-commanding 8.1-point lead steadily evaporated. By Sunday night, with 83% of the vote tallied, it had vanished entirely. Pratt, at 26.7%, now trails Raman, who stands at 27.1%, by 0.4%.
Consider what that means. The next 20% of the vote completely reversed the trend established by the first 63% — not only erasing Pratt’s 8.1-point lead, but producing an 8.5-point swing in the standings. Such a dramatic turnaround strains the limits of credibility. At a minimum, it appears highly suspicious.
Moreover, despite leading by just four-tenths of a percentage point, Raman’s advantage was enough for Decision Desk to project her as the winner of the coveted second runoff spot. If the remaining ballots follow the same pattern, Bass and Raman will move on to the general election — and Pratt’s improbable mayoral campaign will come to an abrupt end.
Needless to say, many of us find this outcome difficult to accept at face value. A result that appeared all but settled on Wednesday morning has been transformed entirely by subsequent ballot drops, producing a swing large enough to change the outcome of the race. Such a dramatic reversal is bound to invite intense scrutiny.
One voter, clearly unconvinced by the outcome, responded as follows:
https://x.com/johnennis/status/2063780149477130291?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Pratt reacted to Sunday’s election update on X, writing: “‘A net swing of more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday..’ 43,000, huh? Where have I seen that number before…?”
He highlighted a sentence in a March report on homelessness in Los Angeles that reads: “43,699 people experienced homelessness on any given night in the City of Los Angeles.”
He adds, “Probably nothing,” followed by a shrug emoji.
In a second post, Pratt wrote, “Remember everyone…we are still in the lead, and we’ve got allllllll the way til July 6th to keep counting. They’re not the only ones who know where to find votes.” He added a winking emoji.
Perhaps anticipating the wave of criticism over California’s notoriously slow vote counting process, Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan addressed reporters last Tuesday night. He warned that they would hear from “some big voices, some loud voices that it’s crazy, that maybe it’s even stupid, that it takes this long for votes to be counted in California. I want to emphasize that it’s not stupid. It’s not crazy. It’s actually the law in California.”
Logan was telling the truth. California has some of the most permissive — if not the most permissive — vote-by-mail laws in the country. Every active registered voter is automatically mailed a ballot before each statewide election. Because the state has refused to allow the Department of Justice to review its voter rolls, there’s no way to know how many registrations belong to deceased individuals, voters who have moved, duplicate records, or were actually fraudulent registrations to begin with.
Additionally, California accepts ballots that arrive as late as one week after Election Day. Although the law requires those ballots to be postmarked on or before Election Day, claims circulating on social media suggest that even a handwritten date may be enough to meet that standard, raising further questions about the state’s ballot-counting process. For obvious reasons, this is impossible to confirm.
At any rate, as Logan explained, the slow process is the law in California. The bigger question is why is it the law?
Other large states, including Florida and Texas, routinely report election results on election night or by the following day. Even many developing countries manage to produce official results within 24 hours of the polls closing. So why does California consider it acceptable for the vote-counting process to drag on for days — or even weeks — after Election Day?
I’ll leave to readers to decide for themselves why that is, and whether it inspires confidence in the process.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn.
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