Nithya Raman has erased Spencer Pratt’s lead and moved ahead in the race for Los Angeles mayor, while Republicans point to California’s still-unfinished ballot count nearly a week after Election Day, as evidence of a deeply flawed election system.
The latest Associated Press tally shows Raman, a Los Angeles City Council member, leading Pratt by more than 3,000 votes, or roughly 0.4 percentage points. Earlier in the day, Pratt had maintained a narrow lead. The winner of the closely watched battle will advance to a November runoff against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, who has already secured enough support to move on to the general election as she seeks a second term. Under Los Angeles’ election system, the top two candidates advance to the runoff if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary.
Raman had previously cried on election night after trailing Pratt by 8 points.
The shifting vote totals have renewed scrutiny of California’s election process, which routinely stretches for days or weeks after Election Day as officials continue receiving, verifying, and counting ballots. Los Angeles County is still processing ballots postmarked on or before Election Day and received by June 9. Officials have until July 2 to finalize results, while California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has until July 10 to certify the election.
The Republican National Committee has seized on the prolonged count, launching an online tracker highlighting the time elapsed since polls closed. “The California primary ended on June 2, 2026; yet California is still counting ballots,” the RNC website tracker counting the seconds since polls closed reads. “The state’s election system is a complete joke. The RNC is tracking every hour it takes California to finish the count,” it added.
California’s lengthy count is largely the result of the state’s universal vote-by-mail system, which sends ballots to all active registered voters. State law also allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive up to seven days later and still be counted. In addition, election workers must complete signature verification and other processing requirements before ballots are added to official totals.
Polling analyst Nate Silver also criticized the pace of California’s election reporting, writing on X, “It’s hard to overstate how much of an outlier California is for its slow vote-counting relative to literally any other state or almost any other industrialized democracy.”