President Trump accused Democrats of "BIG cheating" in California and said the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles had launched an investigation into the state's vote-counting delays, as hundreds of thousands of ballots remained uncounted more than a day after Tuesday's primaries.
Trump posted the accusation on Truth Social in the early hours of Thursday morning, while several high-profile California races, including the governor's contest and the Los Angeles mayoral election, remained too close to call. Neither race had been settled by Thursday morning.
The president's frustration lands on a real problem, even if the political class in Sacramento would rather not discuss it. California runs one of the slowest vote-counting operations in the country, and this week's primaries put that dysfunction on full display once again.
Trump's Truth Social post was direct, as The U.S. Sun reported:
"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???"
Whether the U.S. Attorney's Office has independently confirmed the investigation remains unclear. Trump's post is the sole public statement about the probe in available reporting. But the underlying facts he pointed to, weeks-long counting timelines, massive backlogs of unprocessed ballots, and races frozen in limbo, are not in dispute. They are a documented feature of California's election system.
California permanently adopted universal mail voting after expanding the practice during the pandemic. The system allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive days later and still be counted. Voters can also drop off mail ballots in person on Election Day itself, adding to the pile that election workers must process after polls close.
The result is a counting timeline that would embarrass a county clerk in a swing state.
In the 2020 election, nearly one-third of California ballots remained uncounted after election night, with updates continuing for a full month. Across the state's last five general elections, California counted an average of 38 percent of all votes after Election Day. During the 2022 midterms, half of all ballots were counted after polls had already closed.
Compare that to Florida, which reported nearly all of its 2020 election results within hours of polls closing. Same country. Same election. Radically different competence.
California officials have said they expect to keep releasing results over the next few weeks. For voters and candidates waiting to learn who won, that is not a system working as designed. It is a system that has accepted failure as routine.
The California governor's contest remained fluid Thursday morning. Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate and former Fox News host, held the lead with 26.7 percent of the vote. Former Biden Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra sat second at 25.6 percent. Billionaire liberal activist Tom Steyer trailed at 19.8 percent but remained within striking distance as additional ballots continued to be processed.
California operates under a "jungle primary" system in which candidates from all parties compete on the same ballot. If no one wins an outright majority, the top two finishers advance to a November runoff regardless of party. With hundreds of thousands of ballots still outstanding, the final shape of that runoff remained uncertain.
The fact that a Republican leads the race to replace the outgoing governor in deep-blue California is itself a notable development. But the slow count means that lead could shift, and voters may not know the final primary standings for weeks.
The Los Angeles mayoral primary told its own story of Democratic vulnerability. Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass secured a runoff spot, but it took more than 24 hours after polls closed for that much to become official. She failed to reach even 40 percent of the primary vote, a weak showing for a sitting mayor in a city that leans heavily Democratic.
Spencer Pratt, the independent candidate and former reality TV star, held second place with 29.9 percent. Progressive Democrat Nithya Raman trailed at 22.8 percent. Raman outperformed Pratt by 10.4 percentage points in ballots counted on Wednesday, but the math remained steep: VoteHub estimated roughly 333,000 ballots were still uncounted in the mayoral race, and Raman would need to beat Pratt by about 11.2 percentage points in those remaining ballots to overtake him and claim the second runoff slot.
That an independent reality TV personality is outpacing a progressive Democrat for a spot in the November runoff tells you something about the state of the Democratic establishment in Los Angeles. The cracks are visible, even if the party's leadership would prefer to blame the counting process rather than confront the results.
Trump's accusation of cheating will draw the usual dismissals from the usual quarters. But strip away the political heat and the core complaint stands on solid ground: Why does the largest state in the union run an election system so slow that results take weeks to finalize?
Other large states manage to count ballots on election night or within a day or two. California has built a system, universal mail voting, late-arriving ballots, in-person drop-offs on Election Day, that virtually guarantees prolonged uncertainty. And prolonged uncertainty is not a neutral condition. It erodes public trust. It invites exactly the kind of suspicion Trump voiced Thursday morning. It leaves candidates, voters, and the public in a fog while officials process paper at a pace that belongs to a previous century.
The state's defenders will say the system is designed for accessibility. Fine. But accessibility and competence are not mutually exclusive. Florida manages both. So do dozens of other states. California chooses not to.
Whether the U.S. Attorney's Office investigation yields findings remains to be seen. But the president is asking a question that millions of Californians, and Americans watching from outside the state, have asked for years. A state that cannot produce timely election results is a state that has decided timely results do not matter.
And when a government stops caring whether its citizens trust the process, the citizens are right to wonder why.
