President Donald Trump fired off a string of Truth Social posts over the weekend and into Monday, calling the Los Angeles mayoral primary "crooked" and "rigged" after late-counted mail ballots erased leads held by two Republican candidates, one in the city's marquee race for mayor and another in California's gubernatorial primary.
The target of Trump's sharpest criticism: a vote-counting process that, under California law, allows mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to trickle in for up to seven days and keeps tallies shifting long after the polls close. The result, in two high-profile races, has been the same, Republican candidates who led on election night watched their margins vanish as additional ballots were processed.
In the Los Angeles mayoral contest, conservative former reality TV star Spencer Pratt held second place for several days after Election Day, Newsmax reported. That position would have sent him into a November runoff against incumbent Democrat Mayor Karen Bass, who leads the field with roughly 35% of the vote. But as election workers processed thousands of additional ballots, Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman gradually overtook Pratt. Just over 3,000 votes now separate them, with thousands of ballots still to be counted.
Newsmax and Decision Desk HQ have both projected that Raman has clinched the second runoff spot, setting up a November contest between two Democrats, Bass and Raman, and shutting Pratt out entirely.
Trump's first post came late Sunday. He wrote on Truth Social:
"Has anybody been watching the CROOKED Election going on in California. Two great Republican Candidates are being cheated, and so is America, which if the Dumocrats are able to fulfill their mission, great trouble and consternation will follow. Watch this 'Election' closely!!!"
By Monday morning, Trump amplified the message by sharing an X post from Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., and added his own commentary:
"No way this could have happened. Rigged Election!"
Later Monday, Trump zeroed in on Pratt by name:
"Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had. 3rd World Nation. Rigged Elections! Now they'll be working on great guy Steve Hilton. Won't have results for, possibly, TWO WEEKS, according to officials."
That last line points to the other race drawing Republican frustration.
In California's gubernatorial primary, Republican and former conservative TV commentator Steve Hilton led the field at the end of election night and held that position for several days. But as late ballots continued to be counted, Hilton's lead eroded. He is now locked in a tight contest with billionaire Democrat activist Tom Steyer for second place and the right to advance to the November ballot against Democrat Xavier Becerra.
The pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched California elections in recent cycles. Republicans perform well on Election Day itself, then watch their margins shrink, or disappear, over the days and weeks that follow as mail ballots are processed. Election officials say the extended counting timeline is normal and a natural consequence of the state's decision to mail every registered voter a ballot.
The Associated Press reported that Democrats tended to return their ballots later in the voting period, which analysts say helps explain why Bass and Raman gained ground in the mayoral race as counting progressed. That explanation may be technically accurate. But it does nothing to address the deeper question: why does a state with the resources and technology of California require weeks to count its votes, and why does the direction of the count so reliably favor one party?
Rep. Hamadeh did not mince words. After reposting a Decision Desk HQ projection showing Raman securing the second runoff spot, the Arizona Republican declared on X that California is "incapable of running free and fair elections" and called for federal oversight of the state's election process.
That language is strong. But Hamadeh's frustration reflects a broader Republican complaint that goes beyond any single race: when a system is designed so that final results take weeks and late-arriving ballots consistently move the needle in one direction, public confidence erodes, regardless of whether any fraud actually occurred.
The concerns are not purely rhetorical. The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles announced Friday that it had opened multiple election-fraud investigations related to California elections. The office also assigned a federal prosecutor to observe operations at the county vote-counting center.
That is a concrete step. Federal prosecutors do not typically dispatch observers to routine ballot-counting operations. The move suggests, at minimum, that the Justice Department takes the integrity questions seriously enough to put eyes on the process in real time.
County officials must certify final results by early July. Until then, the counting, and the controversy, will continue.
California's defenders will argue that none of this proves fraud. They will point to the mail-ballot law, the seven-day window, and the predictable pattern of Democratic voters returning ballots later. All of that may be true.
But the question is not whether every individual ballot is legitimate. The question is whether a system designed this way, universal mail ballots, a seven-day acceptance window, weeks of counting, and results that shift dramatically after Election Day, can sustain public trust. Particularly when the shifts run in one direction, race after race, cycle after cycle.
Spencer Pratt led for days. Steve Hilton led for days. Both watched their positions erode as batches of late-counted ballots arrived. Voters who went to bed on election night believing their candidates had won woke up days later to a different reality. That gap between the initial count and the final tally is where confidence breaks down.
Trump called it "rigged." Hamadeh called it "incapable." Whether or not those words are precisely right, the underlying frustration is legitimate. A system that cannot produce timely results, that consistently moves in one party's direction after the fact, and that requires federal prosecutors to observe its counting operations has a credibility problem, one that no amount of procedural explanation can paper over.
The U.S. attorney's investigations may ultimately find nothing. The final tallies may hold up under scrutiny. But the damage to public confidence is already done, and California's leaders have no one to blame but themselves for building a system that makes suspicion inevitable.
When it takes weeks to count votes and the answer always moves left, you don't need a conspiracy theory to explain why millions of Americans have stopped trusting the process. You just need a calendar and a pattern.
