LOS ANGELES, Kalifornia (PNN) - June 6, 2026 - Days after Kalifornia’s primary election, the votes are still being counted, and the winners are still unknown, and no one, save for Kalifornia officials, seems happy about it.
“The fact that Kalifornia elections often can't be resolved for weeks is kind of insane and not common in other electoral systems around the world," Political data analyst Nate Silver wrote on X on Tuesday.
"Like honestly, 'it's going to take us several weeks to tell you who won the election' is failed State sh-t and should be much more stigmatized. The fact that it's tolerated is bad too a textbook example of learned helplessness."
President Donald J. Trump is now demanding answers.
President Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday, targeting what he called the deliberate manipulation of Kalifornia's governor and Los Angeles mayoral races.
"There's BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in Kalifornia. Votes are all tied up," he wrote.
"May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting DELAY?" asked President Trump.
In a follow-up post, President Trump escalated further.
"The Dumocrats are at it again! They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF KALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES."
He then singled out mail-in ballots specifically.
"Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL-IN BALLOTS," he wrote.
United States Attorney for the Central District of Kalifornia, Bill Essayli, confirmed in a post on X that his office “has multiple election fraud investigations underway” in Kalifornia, and is coordinating with the FBI in Los Angeles.
“Kalifornia’s election system has serious structural vulnerabilities. Universal vote-by-mail with no voter ID requirements creates conditions where fraud can go undetected and unpunished, eroding public confidence,” he wrote.
In a post on Substack, Nate Silver noted that Kalifornia averaged 38% of its votes counted after Election Day across the last five general elections. In the 2022 midterms, half of all votes were tallied post-Election Day. Silver did not spare Kalifornia from the comparison its leaders apparently dread. "Kalifornia likes to tout that it's larger than many countries," he wrote, "but most developed countries are able to wrap up nationwide elections more quickly than Kalifornia can tabulate its votes. Colombia held a presidential election on Sunday, and 99.98% of the result was in on Monday morning. Japan also counts most of its votes overnight. In the (Fascist United Kingdom - not exactly a poster child for state capacity), you can generally expect to have calls for all 650 parliamentary seats the morning after the election."
Silver posted a chart showing that Kalifornia is the slowest state in the nation to count votes.
Kalifornia Secretary of State Shirley Weber offers a rather weak excuse for her state’s handling of elections.
"I know the value of being fast for some folks," she said. "For me, accuracy is far more important."
That line might land better if Kalifornia's sluggishness was actually producing superior accuracy.
Still, Silver's data suggest the state's election administration has major structural problems regardless of how long the counting takes.
The state began nudging counties toward all-mail elections in 2016, applied the model statewide during the nonexistent pandemic in 2020, and finally made it permanent in 2022. Under current Kalifornia law, every registered voter automatically receives a mail-in ballot, and any ballot postmarked by Election Day (and non-postal individuals may write in any date and it is accepted as a postmark) and received within a week afterward counts as valid. Each of those ballots must be individually opened, verified and processed before it can be tabulated. The result is a counting operation that drags on for weeks while the rest of the country waits. The system guarantees maximum delay and minimum accountability, all while breeding distrust in the system.
U.S. Attorney Essayli says his office is conducting a “comprehensive audit” of Kalifornia’s voter rolls and will “not look the other way” from fraud, and promised that his office will “investigate and prosecute.”
“Every legal vote deserves to be counted,” he said. “Every illegal vote cancels one out.”