California often takes days or even weeks to tally votes after its elections, a product of measures to protect voters and a deluge of mail ballots dropped off on Election Day. Incomplete vote totals reported in the hours after polls close don’t always reflect final results.
None of this is evidence of fraud. But President Donald Trump has spent more than a week baselessly alleging malfeasance in California’s June 2 primary election, in which votes were still being counted as of June 11, offering a window into how he may approach the November midterm elections.
Trump has claimed repeatedly, without evidence, that Democrats are stealing the election, even though the state is a party stronghold. California’s long count is a well-known feature of its elections, with election officials given about a month to process and tally all ballots.
Democrats and experts on elections aren’t surprised by Trump’s statements, saying he is turning to familiar tactics in an effort to discredit unfavorable results.
“Whenever they don’t like the outcome of an election, they spread lies about the election,” said David Becker, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Voting Rights Section.
‘The Dumocrats’
After the 2020 election, Trump allies mounted a legal campaign to overturn the president’s losses in key battleground states, citing nonexistent fraud. When that failed, GOP lawmakers raised objections certifying President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. Finally, Trump rallied a crowd of supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, that went on to storm the Capitol.
Trump continually cast the election as stolen during that period — a theme he’s returned to in hammering on California.
“The Dumocrats are at it again!” Trump wrote in a social media post on June 3. “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 U.S. Department of Justice is following the president’s lead. The top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles has linked suspicions about California’s elections to the state’s refusal to turn over its unredacted voter roll, which includes sensitive personal data on residents.
The Justice Department has sued California and 29 other states to gain access to the data, which it plans to feed into a Department of Homeland Security computer program that can identify possible noncitizen voters. So far, no federal judge has agreed the DOJ is entitled to the information.
Eye on the midterms
The voter roll lawsuits are part of a proactive campaign by the Trump administration to exert influence and control over the midterms before voting begins.
The president has signed an executive order restricting mail ballots that currently faces multiple lawsuits. And Trump wants Congress to require voters to show documents proving their citizenship, but the legislation has stalled in the Senate.
The stakes of the midterm elections are high for Trump and Republicans. Democrats retaking the House or the Senate or even both would mean the end of his legislative agenda and more aggressive oversight of the administration.
At the same time, Americans’ confidence in elections is declining. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say they are confident or very confident that their state or local government will conduct a fair and accurate election, down from 76% in October 2024, according to a March poll conducted by Marist University.
The 2026 House landscape — and Trump’s past comments — suggest he may direct his ire at additional states in November.
For instance, of the 18 House races that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter categorizes as a “toss up”, three are in Pennsylvania, a swing state that Trump alleged was the site of election fraud in 2020 (he won the state in 2024).
California has its own “toss up” House race and an additional three only lean Democratic, meaning they remain competitive. After California, Texas and other states gerrymandered their congressional maps in recent months, control of the House could again run through California.
“It’s been pretty clear to all of us that Republicans are laying the groundwork to do anything, and they will say anything, to hold power,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, a California Democrat, said at a news conference on June 9.
Evidence of fraud?
States Newsroom asked the White House to provide evidence substantiating Trump’s fraud claims in California. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded with a statement that didn’t directly answer the question.
“Countless Americans share the same concerns as President Trump watching the way California conducts its elections, including taking weeks to deliver results,” the statement says in part.
California’s slow vote count dates back years and is driven by multiple factors. California, along with seven other states, sends mail ballots to all voters. In a statewide special election last year, nearly 89% of voters cast their ballot that way.
This creates a flood of ballots arriving at election offices in the days leading up to and on Election Day, along with large numbers of voters who drop off their ballots in person. Voter signatures must be checked on ballot envelopes, adding more behind-the-scenes work that slows down election workers.
Voters with an issue related to their ballot, such as a missing signature or signature mismatch, also have an opportunity to correct the problem. The process, called ballot curing, adds more time.
Additionally, California has a week-long grace period for ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive late, creating a trickle of votes that come into election offices days after polls have closed.
The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to deliver an opinion soon that could strike down these grace periods nationwide, though such a decision could compound the ballot pileup on Election Day as voters move to get their ballots in sooner.
Need for faster count acknowledged
Evoking an image of a snake digesting a large meal, Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, likened the arrival of ballots on Election Day to “the thing in the python.” Her nonprofit group has long advocated for improvements to the state’s election process, including a faster count.
“While I am dismayed by the unfair criticism being placed on California, I’m more concerned about voter confidence being undermined, not just by those fraudulent claims but also by the long count itself,” Alexander said.
The demand to know the winners of races on election night has been fueled by modern media, as news services and TV networks declare race winners. But these calls are almost always based on incomplete vote totals, and often rely on mathematical analyses of whether enough votes remain uncounted for other candidates to have a realistic chance of winning.
Candidates are officially declared winners by canvassing boards and other election officials in the days and weeks following the election, depending on each state’s procedures. Often election night vote totals match the actual outcome of a race, but not always — a gap Trump is now exploiting to claim fraud.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in May sent a letter to election officials that almost appeared to anticipate the reaction to the June primary and called for quick and accurate vote tabulation.
“Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold,” Newsom wrote.
House GOP leaders join criticism
While California’s slow process is normal for the state, Trump allies have latched onto it — conflating the pace of the count with evidence of wrongdoing, even if they aren’t always as explicit as the president in accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said during an exchange with a CNN reporter on Monday that while he wasn’t saying the election was rigged, it “stinks to high heaven.”
“Whether you can prove fraud or not, it does undermine voter integrity in the vote,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, said of the slow count at a news conference.
But Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, analogized the vote counting to a football game. The vote totals available on election night represent the score at half time — but the final score at the end of the game will be different.
“It doesn’t mean there’s fraud, it just means the game was completed,” Lieu told reporters. “That’s what we’re seeing right now, we’re completing the vote count. And then we’re going to see who wins and who loses.”
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