Late Ballots Tighten the Los Angeles Mayor Race
The Los Angeles mayoral race is still in flux after a late batch of mail-in ballots gave Democratic City Councilwoman Nithya Raman a strong boost. Los Angeles is expected to keep counting through the weekend, and more ballots could still change the picture.
Nearly 60,000 late mail-in ballots were counted on Friday evening. Raman picked up more than 23,000 new votes. Spencer Pratt got about 11,000. That kind of split can move a race fast, especially when there are still a lot of votes left to process.
Karen Bass has already been projected to advance to the November runoff. The top two candidates move on if nobody gets more than 50% of the vote. Right now, Pratt and Raman are fighting for the second runoff spot.
Federal authorities are also taking a closer look at California election handling. First Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said on Friday that his office is conducting “multiple election fraud investigations” with the FBI and a “comprehensive audit of California’s voter rolls” with the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
Assistant US Attorney Robert Renner was also seen observing the ballot processing center in LA County on Friday and reportedly asking questions about the process. That added another layer of attention to a count already moving slowly.
Pratt started election night with an early lead over Raman. But the late-arriving mail ballots, which are expected to make up roughly a third of the total vote, are still being worked through under California’s vote-by-mail rules. The count can take days because each ballot has to be signed off and any problem can trigger a 10-day cure period.
“The most recent mail-in ballots that were processed are favoring Democrats, as many analysts suggested they would. Inside the ballot processing center here in LA County, any ballot that was postmarked by Election Day, Tuesday, must be counted by law,” Fox’s Matt Finn reports from outside LA County’s ballot processing center.
“The process takes so long, in part because each ballot must have its signature verified, and if there’s an issue, there’s a 10-day period to have it cured,” he continued, noting that it’s “very likely” counting will continue into next week.
As of the latest update, Pratt’s lead over Raman had shrunk again, even with more than 250,000 ballots still outstanding. The race remains close enough that the next updates could matter a lot. For now, the only sure thing is that Los Angeles is still counting, and the margin is moving with every new batch.