The president is using the slow count of mail ballots in California to renew his effort to cast doubt on election outcomes he doesn’t like, despite a lack of evidence of any widespread fraud.
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By baselessly framing the rise of a candidate for Los Angeles mayor as a Democratic scam, President Trump has extended his long-running project to erode public faith in elections.Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
For President Trump, any Democratic election victory is suspicious on its face. Even, apparently, in one of the most liberal cities in America.
“Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Monday. “3rd World Nation.”
On election night last Tuesday, Mr. Pratt — the reality-television personality and Trump-endorsed Republican — led the progressive city councilwoman Nithya Raman for second place to advance to November’s mayoral runoff, behind the incumbent, Mayor Karen Bass, who is also a Democrat.
But as election officials spent the following week counting late-arriving mail ballots, which were disproportionately from Democrats, Ms. Raman edged ahead of Mr. Pratt. On Monday evening, The Associated Press said that she had indeed prevailed.
Such fleeting Republican leads are common enough to have a name — the “red mirage” — yet Mr. Trump, as he did in his own 2020 loss, cast the slow count as proof of theft. By baselessly framing Ms. Raman’s rise as a Democratic scam, Mr. Trump extended his long-running project to erode public faith in elections — and gave an unusually clear preview of how he could greet any disappointing results for his party in November, when control of Congress is at stake.
He has been anything but subtle about his desire to limit the ability of Democrats to vote by mail, implying, with no evidence, that simply choosing that widely used means of casting a ballot is inherently suspect. Addressing a gathering of Republican lawmakers in March, he said the way to hold their majority was to pass a strict voter identification law cracking down on mail ballots.
“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” he told them, warning that failure would bring “big trouble.”
Privately, according to one senior adviser, he has pressed aides to find ways to “stop them stealing it from us.”
Nithya Raman, a progressive city councilwoman, prevailed against Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayor’s race.Credit…Stella Kalinina for The New York Times
What is striking so far is how little of this has survived contact with reality. Voting legislation he has championed, the SAVE Act, cleared the House but stalled in the Senate, where Republicans lack the votes to break a Democratic filibuster. Among other things, the bill would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and would compel states to share voter rolls with the federal government.
An executive order he signed in March directing the Department of Homeland Security to assemble a federal list of eligible voters and barring the Postal Service from delivering mail ballots to anyone left off it was condemned by election experts as illegal and drew multiple lawsuits.
