The Guardian81%
Why the California vote count is slow – and Trump’s fraud claims are bogus 11%
By Cecilia Nowell0%
6/9/2026, 12:12:54 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 16 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Quote-first Misdirection, and Confirmation Bias, with Hasty Generalization as the most egregious example at 10.1% saturation with 113 hits. Analysis detected 581 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,115 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 27.5% and a BS Rank of 11% (19,622 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 89.70% of the article peer group.
As California continues to slowly count ballots, Donald Trump and other Republicans are spreading claims of election fraud that have become common after California elections.
On Monday, Trump-backed Republican Steve Hilton was inching closer to securing the second runoff spot in the California governor’s race, after Democrat Xavier Becerra secured the first spot on Friday.
But the race has yet to be called for Hilton, with more than 2.5m ballots still left to be counted across the state.
In the Los Angeles mayoral race, progressive city councillor Nithya Raman advanced to the runoff Monday.
She and reality TV star Spencer Pratt, a registered Republican, were in a close race to challenge Karen Bass, the incumbent mayor, who advanced to the runoff on election night.
On Sunday, Raman began to lead in the election count as more mail-in ballots were tallied.
When Decision Desk HQ posted that it predicted Raman would win the second seat in LA’s mayoral runoff, Trump posted on Truth Social: “No way this could have happened.
Rigged Election!”
In a separate post, he added: “Two great Republican Candidates are being cheated.”
## Who’s spreading election fraud conspiracy theories?
Just days after the California primary, Trump began claiming without evidence that Democrats were cheating in the state’s election, and urging Americans to support the Save Act.
On Thursday, Trump wrote in a social media post: “The Dumocrats are at it again!
They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES.
Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.”
He repeated such claims before walking out of an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Friday, and over the weekend.
Trump has a history of undermining election results that don’t go in his favor, most notably alleging that Democrats “stole” the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
He’s repeatedly opposed mail-in ballots, a voting method favored by Democrats in recent elections.
Over the weekend, Trump’s preferred LA mayoral candidate Pratt hinted at similar election conspiracy theories in a social media post, writing, “They’re not the only ones who know where to find votes” and suggesting that Raman’s lead in the race came from votes from the entirety of LA’s unhoused population.
On Monday, tech billionaire Elon Musk joined the fray, reposting several tweets questioning the integrity of California’s elections, supporting the Save Act and alleging that recently counted votes in support of Raman were fraudulent.
In a post, he wrote: “Once voting is this fraudulent, they can get whatever outcome they want, making a sham of democracy.”
Meanwhile, offline, Trump’s justice department sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot counting in LA and the first assistant US attorney for the central district of California, Bill Essayli, announced his office had “multiple election fraud investigations under way” in coordination with the FBI’s Los Angeles office.
## Is there evidence of voter fraud?
No credible evidence of voter fraud has emerged in California.
Essayli has even debunked some of the claims currently circulating about ballot manipulation, writing in a social media post: “There was a claim circulating on social media about an election night ballot update at the Los Angeles Registrar of Voters where one candidate received zero votes.
We reviewed official county records.
The claim is false.”
Voter fraud is incredibly rare in the United States.
To create a database of 1,000 instances of voter fraud, the conservative Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025, “had to go back decades in time where there have been hundreds of millions of votes cast and a very small number of cases of election fraud have been found, none of which affected election outcomes,” according to the Brookings Institution.
Analyzing Heritage’s data, to give concrete examples, Brookings found that the percentage of fradulent votes cast in Arizona was .0000845% and no election outcome there was altered by ballot fraud.
## Why does California take so long to count its ballots?
California has long been among the slowest states when it comes to counting ballots.
That’s because California has “the most accessible, secure and verifiable election system in the country”, said Kim Alexander of the California Voter Foundation, a nonpartisan voting rights group.
Every voter in California receives a mail-in ballot, which most voters use to vote by mail.
The signatures on those ballots are verified electronically and by human observers – and voters are given the opportunity to fix any errors within 22 days of the election.
The system prevents the state from having to discard ballots with minor errors, but means it can easily take more than 22 days for California to count all votes.
“There’s not a lot of people I know who would say: ‘Nah, I would rather have known who won the race faster than have my vote count,’” Paul Mitchell, vice-president of the voter data firm Political Data Inc, told the Guardian.
“The only people who complain about it are the people who lose.”
But Californians understand that the state’s slow pace can create space for misinformation to spread.
“Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold,” governor Gavin Newsom warned in a letter that he sent to county election offices last month, urging them to speed up their counts.
“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.”
## Why do Californians wait so long to vote?
Another reason why California takes so long to call the results of its elections is because voters often wait until the last minute to cast their ballots.
Many of these last-minute ballots are not counted until after election day.
The state also accepts mail-in ballots that were postmarked on and before election day and received no later than a week after the election.
## Will Newsom block Pratt from winning the LA mayor’s race?
Rumors that California governor Newsom will block Pratt from advancing in the LA mayor’s race have begun circulating on social media, citing Newsom saying he had a “break the glass” option for Pratt winning.
In reality, Newsom told lawmakers he had a “break-the-glass” contingency plan to support at least one of the Democratic candidates in the state’s governor’s race if it looked likely that two Republicans were headed to the general election.
Although he did not share details of the plan, it included rallying Democratic voters to go to the polls ahead of the primary rather than blocking a candidate from winning after the election.
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