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For Spencer Pratt’s supporters, the last four days of the Los Angeles mayoral primary vote-counting and conclusion were like a gut punch delivered in slow motion.

On election night, their candidate held a lead of roughly 40,000 votes over Democratic Socialist City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, a margin that seemed to validate Pratt’s social media insurgency – and set up a November runoff against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. By Sunday evening, six days later, that lead had evaporated entirely. Raman had pulled ahead by more than 3,100 votes, crushing Pratt’s long-shot dream of flipping Los Angeles City Hall red.

“A net swing of more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday,” Pratt wrote on X, his frustration at California’s vote tallying methods barely concealed.

For many conservatives watching the returns, the numbers stung after a triumphant few days when it appeared as if heavily Democratic Angeleno voters were responding to Pratt’s confrontational challenge to Bass’ troubled tenure, epitomized for Pratt and his supporters by her passive response to the devastating and deadly Palisades and Altadena fires.

In the days since, conservative suspicion over California’s vote-by-mail election system and prolonged voting counting has hardened into something louder: a full-throated challenge to the legitimacy of the state’s electoral system, amplified by President Trump himself and now the subject of a federal law enforcement investigation.

The consolation for many Republicans buoyed by Pratt’s unlikely candidacy was that Trump-endorsed Steve Hilton was confirmed as securing the No. 2 outcome in the gubernatorial race. He will face off against Xavier Becerra, a career Democratic politician who has served in Congress, as California attorney general, and as Health and Human Services secretary in the Biden administration.

The gubernatorial race had its own slow resolution this week. Becerra had secured his spot in the November general election early on. But Hilton had to wait until Tuesday night when media outlets called the No. 2 spot in his favor over Tom Steyer – even though his lead slipped to less than three percentage points over the billionaire with 89% of ballots counted.

A system built for suspicion

To understand why conservatives are so primed for outrage over California’s ballot-counting process, it helps to understand what that process actually looks like – and how differently Republicans and Democrats have come to see it.

California is a universal vote-by-mail state, meaning ballots are automatically sent to every registered voter before Election Day. Those ballots can be returned by mail, dropped at a ballot drop box, or handed to a third party – a family member, a neighbor, a campaign worker, a union volunteer – who then returns them on the voter’s behalf. This last practice, known as ballot harvesting, is legal in California but prohibited in most other states.

Under California law, mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day can be counted if they arrive up to one week later, which is why races that appear settled on election night can flip dramatically as the week wears on. Election officials and voting rights advocates say the system is designed to maximize participation and that the extended counting timeline is a routine feature of the process, not a........

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