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President Trump didn’t mince words Thursday when asked about the ongoing vote count in California, declaring flatly, “They’re rigging the election.” The President was referring to the suspicious pattern that has emerged in multiple California races, where Republican candidates held leads on election night only to see those advantages evaporate as late-arriving mail-in ballots continue to trickle in days after polls closed.
The most visible example is playing out in the Los Angeles mayor’s race, where Spencer Pratt surged to an early lead on election night, trailing incumbent Democrat Karen Bass by a razor-thin margin. With over four million ballots still uncounted statewide and California’s notorious vote-by-mail system allowing ballots to arrive days after Election Day, the final outcome remains anything but certain. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton currently leads with 27.5% of the vote, but the same dynamic applies: millions of late ballots could easily flip the script.
Trump connected the California chaos to his broader push for election integrity legislation, specifically the SAVE America Act, which would end no-excuse mail-in voting and require proof of citizenship to cast a ballot. “We just don’t want cheating in our elections, and you see it happening in California,” Trump told reporters. “Those numbers are coming down rapidly. They found a lot of mail-in ballots last night, shockingly. So, we don’t want that.” The President’s use of “shockingly” drips with the sarcasm of a man who has seen this movie before and knows exactly how it ends.
The House has already approved the SAVE America Act three times, but the Senate has failed to act. Meanwhile, California’s election system continues to operate on a timeline that would be unrecognizable to the Founders, with final results potentially taking weeks to certify while mystery ballots materialize from who-knows-where. Is it any wonder that confidence in American elections has cratered when one party consistently benefits from a process that seems designed to prevent timely, transparent counting?
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