Is California’s Election ‘Rigged’?

I smell a big commie rat!

Is California’s Election ‘Rigged’?

There’s no evidence of fraud so far, but the state’s lax voting rules create openings for it.

By The Editorial Board, WSJ

June 8, 2026

Election workers process ballots for the California state primary election at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center, City of Industry, Calif., June 5. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

President Trump’s charge that Democrats “rigged” California’s jungle primary has naturally elicited eye-rolls given his habit of crying fraud whenever he loses an election. But he has a point that the state’s Democrats have designed a leaky election system to juice their votes.

California’s sloth-like pace of counting ballots and a marked shift in the Los Angeles mayoral race since Election Day last Tuesday prompted a social-media outburst by the President: “No way this could have happened. Rigged Election!” Mr. Trump’s skill set isn’t facts, so let us explain what happened.

Republican reality TV celebrity Spencer Pratt was in second place on election night behind Mayor Karen Bass, with an eight-point lead over left-wing city councilwoman Nithya Raman. At that point only about half of the ballots expected to be cast had been counted. But Ms. Raman leapfrogged Mr. Pratt on Sunday after tens of thousands of additional ballots were counted.

California sends mail-in ballots to all registered voters who have until Election Day to send them back. Many ballots don’t arrive at county election offices until days later. California also lets people register and vote on Election Day. Voters may cast ballots in-person at any polling place in their county. The result is a large number of provisional ballots are cast that require more scrutiny. All of this prolongs vote-counting.

The state also lets third parties including unions, campaigns and political parties collect and return an unlimited number of ballots on voters’ behalf—a practice known as ballot harvesting. This can result in large dumps of mail-in ballots that support a particular candidate.

Ballots that have arrived after Election Day in California have skewed Democratic. The share of ballots returned by Democratic voters on Saturday was about 56%—about 11 percentage points more than its share of the electorate—compared to 47% on Election Day. The share of ballots cast by younger voters also surged.

None of this is a surprise. Democrats legislated election rules to make it exceptionally easy to register and vote with the intent of boosting turnout among young and low-propensity voters who lean left. But these rules also create openings for fraud and improper voting.

An ID isn’t strictly required to register to vote. Those who don’t furnish one to register are supposed to present one when they vote for the first time in a federal election, though this requirement isn’t strictly enforced. The state lists a gym card, drug prescription and even a sample ballot as acceptable forms of ID. Federal prosecutors last month indicted a California woman for paying homeless people on Skid Row to register using her former address, meaning ballots would be sent there. She agreed to plead guilty.

County election officials aren’t required to check whether a voter is a citizen or, well, even a person. A woman from Orange County, Calif., was charged last fall with illegally registering her dog to vote and submitting ballots on the canine’s behalf. One ballot was counted, the other was tossed. The fraud was caught because the woman reported herself.

State regulations also allow late-arriving ballots to be counted even if they lack a post-mark as long as they include a handwritten date on the envelope. The state even instructs county officials to accept sample ballots. Because election officials often don’t remove inactive voters until after several election cycles, ballots may be sent to people who have died or moved.

The L.A. County Registrar office is led by Dean Logan, who previously oversaw Washington state’s King County elections at the time of a contentious recount in the 2004 governor’s race. While the Republican candidate led in the initial machine recount, the Democrat was declared the winner after batches of ballots from King County turned up.

There’s no evidence so far that fraud has affected the results of the L.A. mayoral race, but the delayed results are a disservice to democracy. The state’s loose voting rules and dilatory counting fuel distrust in elections, and play into the hands of Mr. Trump. You’d think Gov. Gavin Newsom would care about this, but as long as progressives are winning, maybe not.