‘They Found a Lot of Mail-In Ballots!’ Trump Baselessly Accuses California of ‘Rigging’ Elections as Democrats Gain on Spencer Pratt and Steve Hilton

During a meandering press conference Thursday, President Donald Trump baselessly accused California of “rigging” the election as Democratic candidates are gaining in the vote counting and Republicans Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt are losing ground.

California election law provides for “jungle primaries” in which all the candidates appear on a single ballot for each race, and the top two vote-getters advance even if they are both in the same party. This means that a party can find itself totally shut out of the general election, especially if multiple candidates from that party divide the vote and make it easier for the other side to coalesce around a smaller group of candidates. (In the governor’s race, the top two advance to the general election; in the mayor’s race, the top two advance unless one candidate manages to get over 50% of the vote.)

This year, current Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is term-limited. Candidates to succeed him include Democrats Tom Steyer and Xavier Becerra and Republican Hilton, who was endorsed by Trump.

The Los Angeles mayor’s race is officially nonpartisan but incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and progressive LA councilmember Nithya Raman are registered Democrats and are running on progressive platforms, while former reality television star Spencer Pratt is a registered Republican and has drawn fawning coverage from conservative media, in no small part because of his outspoken attacks on Bass, Newsom, and other Democrats. Pratt has also been expressly praised by Trump.

California’s primary election was held Tuesday, June 2, but the results are not yet known for many races, and the state has habitually taken weeks to certify elections, drawing bipartisan criticism. State law allows counties to process ballots up to 30 days after elections and can count late-arriving ballots as long as they were postmarked by Election Day and arrive by June 9.

As CNN’s Ethan Cohen reported, Democratic candidates “typically” end up improving their numbers as votes are counted, “because votes cast on Election Day are almost entirely reported on election night, while the votes counted later are predominately mail ballots,” and it’s been the trend for Democrats to be “much more likely to vote by mail, while Republicans have preferred to vote on Election Day.”

“And there’s reason to believe that effect could be even more significant this year,” Cohen wrote, “as Democratic voters appeared to be returning their ballots at a slower pace than past elections, according to data from Political Data, Inc., a Democratic-aligned data firm, meaning they could make up a larger share of the votes still to count.”

At the time of this article’s publication, CNN reported that Hilton had 27.5% of the vote, Becerra had 25.6%, and Steyer had 19.8%, with an estimated 56% of the vote counted. Becerra and Steyer have continued to cut into Hilton’s lead as counting has gone on.

For the mayor’s race, CNN reported Bass had 35%, Pratt 29.9%, Raman 22.8%, and the rest of the large field of candidates in the single digits, with an estimated 62% of the vote counted.

Trump included a brief rant about his frustrations with the California elections during a chat with reporters from the Oval Office Thursday. He began by touting the SAVE America Act that he has supported, saying it requires “all voters” to show photo ID, so it is “not complicated.”

“Who could oppose it?” Trump asked rhetorically about the bill, which has been stalled in Congress, much to his annoyance. “They say it’s an 80-20, it’s not, it’s about 99-1, and we’ll never find the one person.”

“So you have all voters, must show photo ID, identification, all voters must all show a little thing called proof of citizenship,” Trump continued, again riffing that this was an issue that had 99% or even 100% support.

This is not accurate, especially regarding the legislation’s requirement for proof of citizenship, which has sparked concerns it will be overly burdensome for people who have changed their names, like many married women.

A CBS/YouGov poll taken March 16 to 29 found that 80% favored requiring photo ID — not the 99% Trump claimed — and 20% opposed it, with a +/-2.2 percentage point margin of error. Among Republicans, the numbers still fell a bit short, with 95% in favor, and 5% opposed. The numbers dropped off when asked about requiring proof of citizenship, with 66% in favor and 34% opposed. Support for the SAVE America Act itself was only 28%, with 31% opposed (for Republicans, the bill got 60% support, 6% opposed, and 6% unsure).

A Politico poll taken April 11 to 14 of 2,035 U.S. adults found only 52% support for bill, with 18% opposed, 17% said neither, and 13% didn’t know. That same poll showed that the SAVE America Act didn’t even have 99% approval among Trump voters, with 75% support, 6% opposed, 12% neither, and 7% didn’t know. The margin of error in this poll was +/-2.2 percentage points.

Trump then complained about mail-in ballots.

“And you have no mail-in ballots but we wanna be liberal, as they say, or we will say we want to be progressive,” Trump said about other provisions of the bill.  “So it’s no mail-in ballots.”

“You see what’s happening in California — they’re rigging the election,” he continued. “Now maybe we caught them and maybe they won’t be able to get away with it. They tried with me, they did it successfully the second time. The third time we made it too big to rig. Too many votes, they couldn’t do it, and they can only go — they gave up at about 9:07 when they got slaughtered with the votes. But no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military, or travel. So we are being very progressive and we just don’t want cheating in our elections. And you see it happening in California. Those numbers are coming down rapidly. They found a lot of mail-in ballots last night, shockingly. So we don’t want that.”

Watch the video above via Fox News.

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