Election Denial, California Edition
What’s happening: Conservatives on social media, including President Donald Trump, are falsely claiming that the recent California primary elections were rigged in favor of Democrats and against Trump-endorsed candidates.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because those making this claim are largely turning to the same playbook that was used to make similar claims after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020.
Context: California held primary elections on June 2, 2026, for positions including governor and Los Angeles mayor. In California, all candidates are listed on one primary ballot, regardless of party, and the two candidates who receive the most votes move to the general election.
- As votes continued to be counted five days after Election Day, in the gubernatorial primary, Trump-backed Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, fell from first to second place as more votes were recorded. As of June 9, when votes were still being tallied, Democrat Xavier Becerra secured the top spot while second-place had not yet been settled, although Hilton had appeared headed for a second place finish.
- In Los Angeles, as the votes came in, Republican mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, a reality television personality, fell out of the top two spots that advance to the November general election. In the end, the incumbent mayor, Karen Bass, and progressive city council member Nithya Raman received the most votes.
A closer look: After Election Day, conservatives began pointing to the relatively slow pace of vote-counting and the high volume of mail-in votes as proof of fraud.
- On June 4, Trump posted on Truth Social: “The Dumocrats are at it again! They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.” The post received 7,600 reposts and 26,000 likes in four days.
- On June 7, conservative influencer Robby Starbuck stated on X to his 865,500 followers: “Spencer Pratt is likely going to be overtaken by far left [Democratic mayoral candidate] Nithya Raman today. … Nithya did this by suddenly winning 1st in every new ballot drop. North Korean ‘elections’ have more self respect. Even they’d find it absurd for 3rd to suddenly jump to 1st place in every ballot drop DAYS after an election. It’s just ludicrous.” The post received 7.2 million views and 16,000 likes in one day.
Actually: The prolonged counting time and use of mail-in ballots are not evidence of voter fraud.
- Effective this year, election officials have a maximum of 30 days to count final ballots before California’s Secretary of State certifies the results 38 days after the election, according to the Secretary’s website.
- There are multiple factors in the voting process that contribute to California’s prolonged vote-counting. As long as mail-in ballots are postmarked by Election Day, they can be counted if they are received within seven days, according to the California Secretary of State’s office. California also gives voters 22 days after Election Day to re-sign ballots if their initial signature does not match during verification, according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
- Additionally, mail-in ballots make up most of the Los Angeles votes counted after election night, The New York Times reported. These votes tend to lean Democrat because Democrats generally use mail-in ballots more than Republicans, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study on 2024 voting trends.
- The trend has been observed in prior elections, including in several states that went for Biden in 2020, when vote counts shifted toward Democrats as mail-in ballots were counted.
Zooming out: Claims that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump continue to spread online, as Trump himself continues to promote the widely debunked claim. Its persistence has apparently had an impact on public opinion. According to a March 2026 NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, half of Americans — and 70 percent of Republicans — believed it is either very likely or likely that voter fraud will occur during the 2026 midterm elections.
- As the accusations related to the California primaries suggest, such claims will likely remain in the limelight as the nation gears up for the 2026 midterm elections, which will determine whether Republicans will remain in control of both houses of Congress.
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When it comes to the war in Iran, you may want to get your information from sources other than your favorite AI tool.
NewsGuard recently tested the 11 leading artificial intelligence tools on 10 news-related false claims circulating online and found that the AI chatbots proved more vulnerable to the claims relating to the Iran war compared to other news topics. The NewsGuard audit found that bots on average produced false responses 15.45 percent of the time in response to typical user prompts on topics in the news.
On the subset of prompts related to the war in Iran, they repeated falsehoods 25 percent of the time.
Read the full report here.
This newsletter was edited by Sofia Rubinson and Eric Effron.
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