OPINION:
ChatGPT could not find one example in American history of a third-place candidate surging days after an election to overtake second place — yet that is what we are seeing in the Los Angeles mayoral race, with democratic socialist Nithya Raman besting reality TV star Spencer Pratt over the weekend, possibly edging him out of the runoff.
For mail-in ballots arriving before the election, Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, received 38% of the vote, Mr. Pratt received 28%, and Ms. Raman received 20%. Voter turnout for Ms. Raman on June 2, the day of the election, was so tepid that she gave a concession speech in which she sobbed to her family and friends for having failed.
Then something miraculous happened: a surge in Ms. Raman’s popularity that was not observable before or on June 2. She collected 37% of the mail-in ballots that arrived after the election (a 17% surge), besting Ms. Bass’ 35% (a 3% drop from preelection mail-in votes), and Mr. Pratt’s 19% (a 9% drop).
Just to be clear: Mail-in ballots that arrived after June 2 dropped for everyone except for the person Democrats needed to defeat Mr. Pratt. Ms. Bass stayed around 35% of the vote nearly the entire time; the only wild change was between the No. 2 and No. 3 candidates.
It is simply not mathematically or statistically realistic.
The left is telling us that Democrats vote late by mail, which is certainly true, but it does not explain why Ms. Raman — who is relatively unknown — received a disproportionate share of the late mail-in votes while Ms. Bass’ numbers remained relatively unchanged.
No external event could explain this. Before the election, no late-breaking scandals emerged among the candidates, nor were there any endorsements that could have altered the race’s trajectory. However, online buzz suggested that Mr. Pratt, an independent, could make the runoff and secure the No. 2 spot.
In one of the ballot drops late on election night, Mr. Pratt received zero of 24,000 votes. SuperGrok estimates places those odds at less than 1 in trillions.
The most concentrated batches of mail-in votes for Ms. Raman came from Skid Row, where tens of thousands of homeless people live, with no address or phone number to verify them, but they are still allowed to vote, and ballot harvesting is legal (where third parties can collect and turn in ballots on voters’ behalf).
In California, the Service Employees International Union engages in ballot harvesting and get-out-the-vote efforts, and then helps count and tabulate ballots, creating a clear conflict of interest, as the union also endorses Democrats. Other large Democratic institutions also do this. One California woman has been indicted on charges of paying the homeless to cast their ballots while working for one of these organizations.
A simple explanation for Ms. Raman’s meteoric rise is that whoever was harvesting the votes was not just collecting ballots but also controlling the votes, either by filling out the ballots or throwing out those they did not like.
None of this will likely be proved. In May, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that prohibits law enforcement and federal agencies from accessing voter rolls, investigating polling places and election workers, and verifying mail-in ballots.
“To be frank, our system sucks,” Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, told CNN. “We have universal vote by mail, we have no voter ID, and that is a recipe for fraud, and it makes it almost impossible to know how many people are eligible to vote in California.”
He explained that his office has tried to audit the state’s voter rolls, with a case pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where Democratic leadership in California is trying to stonewall the federal audit. By passing the SAVE America Act, Congress could help Mr. Essayli in his efforts, but, alas, it probably will not.
In a press conference in May, Mr. Newsom warned of the Democratic strategy to prevent a Republican-only general election for California governor.
“We all have agencies where we can shape the future. … There is a break-the-glass scenario, and I — there’s many people that have a deep understanding of what it would look like if Democrats were locked out, and we’re going to do everything to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ll leave it at that.”
Well, it certainly will not happen at the mayoral level. Democrats got the results they intended.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
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