Trump's claims of 'fraud' in LA mayoral vote could provide preview of midterm election night

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, a former TV personality, came in third in Sunday's official vote count, prompting US President Donald Trump and others to wonder if something was amiss.

“This can't happen. The election is postponed!” Trump announced on Truth Social earlier Monday after Nithya Raman took on Pratt.

After incumbent Karen Bass last week secured a spot in the Nov. 3 between the top two vote getters, with Pratt in contention for the final spot The hills fame and Raman, who is the current city councillor.

Pratt had an 8.1 percentage point lead over Raman on election night about a week ago, but as of late Sunday, Raman has a lead of about 0.4 points, or 3,100 votes.

The Associated Press estimated that fewer than 150,000 votes remained to be counted.

The mayoral election is nonpartisan, but Bass was a US House of Representatives Democrat and Raman was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

In the early months of the campaign, Pratt went to great lengths to portray himself as smart and focused on municipal issues. Trump challenged his surprise campaign late last month by calling him a “big MAGA guy,” even though Pratt wants to distance himself from the endorsement.

Although even the social media account of the press office of Gov. Gavin Newsom – who often criticizes Trump – admitted “we wish the votes were counted quickly,” all candidates are subject to the same rules. California officials took pains to explain the process – votes can be counted as long as they are marked on the first day of June 2 and arrive at the election office within seven days. But the calculation may take longer than that.

Jay Clayton, the US attorney appointed by Trump for the Southern District of New York, in an interview with CNBC on Monday morning that such a process “makes the opportunity for fraud much greater.”

Bill Essayli, first assistant US attorney for the Central District of California, advocated the use of a special email address dedicated to “election fraud tips,” while raising concerns about widespread voting by those who are not authorized to be in the US.

Ten years ago, Trump complained that widespread polling by illegal immigrants, especially in California, included votes for Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate, meaning it was not tied to the evidence.

'All I have to do is look'

Trump presented complaints about the process in California Meet the media interview that aired on Sunday.

“Do you think it's appropriate for them to have an election and then five days later, come close to choosing a winner?” asked minister Kristen Welker.

When pressed for evidence that this vote or his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden was “rigged,” the best Trump could say was: “All I have to do is look.” He then abruptly ended the interview with a low “Thank you, honey,” as he placed a hand on Welker's shoulder.

Trump's comments raise concerns among Democrats that the US is once again headed for the kind of post-election chaos seen after the Trump-Biden contest six years ago.

“Although the President's frustration is nonsense, his deception of voter fraud is dangerous,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state on social media.

Trump has already made a big impact in the Nov. 2 midterms. 3 by forcing Republican states to redefine their congressional boundaries for partisan purposes. While a minority has pushed for those changes, so has California, which is likely to add five Democratic seats to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Marc Elias of the Democracy Docket, who often fights law enforcement in the Trump administration, said in a statement issued Sunday that he thinks it is inevitable that the fraud complaints will be renewed in five months.

“In the days after the November 2026 election, we will likely see a number of California races called in favor of Democrats … to prevent that outcome, Trump is trying to outright derail the California results and create a consensus framework for Republicans to challenge and set aside,” he said.

Do early results produce cognitive biases?

Through private statements or official government releases, Trump's vice president Mike Pence, attorney general William Barr and cybersecurity director Chris Krebs all testified that there is no basis to prevent the transfer of power to Biden in 2020.

Trump's claims of fraud in 2020 have been difficult to explain in the highly fragmented, complex voting landscape where 10,000 different authorities hold many races, including school boards, local, state and federal races. A voter in Maricopa County, Arizona on Nov. 5, 2020, did not have the same vote as the one in Fulton County in Georgia, and the seven contested battleground counties that year used several different voting technology systems.

It is not clear under such a situation whether one or a few races – Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is the only one who lost as bitterly as Trump – it was possible that the vote values ​​were used while other contests in the same vote in all voting systems continued well.

Academic research is not on Trump's side, either.

Voter fraud is often individual and unorganized on a large scale – more than one Canadian citizen who recently entered the US court system for illegally voting. One study that analyzed hundreds of audits in more than half of the states in the 2020 election concluded that “the total error rate in counting presidential votes was in the thousands of percent, with similarly inconsequential errors in other state and federal contests.”

Trump's opposition to absentee ballots was curious – there have been many polls and data analysis showing that registered Republicans are happy to vote absentee – and it should be noted that he has won two out of three US presidential elections to cast the most votes by mail.

Conducting a series of tests comparing 2016 and 2020, political scientists in one study, shown below, concluded that Trump really improved his performance in 2016 in California, although it was a lost cause, as the state wanted to make it easier for everyone to vote at a time when there was no vaccine for the COVID-19 virus.

Meanwhile, statements like Clayton's on Monday may raise what another group of researchers calls a multiple-choice bias, a perceived bias that skews perceptions of early leaders in partial vote counts.

Trump has expressed a desire for votes not to be decided on election night, although that was not the case in the 1960 or 2000 presidential elections.

Also, clear and snap elections called have presented their own problems, historically. In 1980, Ronald Reagan's landslide was broadcast by television networks while countless voters were on the line in California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington state and Hawaii.

Many turned around and went home, and officials in those states were furious, as it depressed the number of votes in several other races.