Andromeda 🌌

540,000 votes for city attorney of Los Angeles versus 617,000 for mayor so far. 77,000 Angelenos voted for mayor and then decided to leave their ballots blank for the citywide attorney position? That’s 12.5%. 12.5% of the ballots had a vote for mayor but not city attorney. Ok. Totally not ballot stuffi By rama

JUST IN: A Bass-Raman runoff in November is looking more likely, according to Saturday's batch of election results. Councilmember Nithya Raman gains 2.24 points on Spencer Pratt, cutting his lead to 1.11% in the L.A. mayor's race.

Me trying to figure out how votes get counted in LA

Socrates Talks, Episode IV Golden State Campaigns © 2026 Socratessword [I do not get paid to write these essays. If you appreciate what I have written, please re-post. It can be hard to get visibility on X for longer articles.] The June 2 California primary state election stirred up some confusion. Multiple commentators are using this period to spread misinformation. They are preying on ignorance. I am not ignorant. I spent 20 years in conservative politics. I worked for two big-state governors, state legislators, a think tank, a major beltway PAC and dozens of campaigns. I do know CA elections as well. I have worked on campaigns from the Pacific Ocean to Nevada State Line. I have worked from the Oregon Border to the Grapevine, plus a few down South. I know CA campaigns. Let’s wander. 1)CA allows for mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day to arrive up to seven days later. In essence, the polls aren’t closed. This is different from other states like FL. I suspect that this is because CA has a lot of business travel, and until the Cold War ended, hundreds of thousands of service members. In fact, the elimination of those bases was a major reason why the state shifted Left 2)In recent years, over 80% of CA’s votes are mail-in ballots. These ballots take a lot of time to process. The signature on the envelope and the signature on record are compared. If they match, the ballot goes on to processing. If staff feels they do not, the voter is contacted within 24 hours. They generally have two days to respond. Ballots are not opened until verification is complete. 3)Once they are verified, the ballots are separated from the envelope to maintain secrecy. 4)Ballots are inspected. Damaged ballots are duplicated by bipartisan teams onto fresh ballots. Write-in votes are processed according to state standards. 5)Prepared ballots are scanned on high-speed tabulators (stand-alone machines not connected to the internet). Any questionable marks go to a bipartisan adjudication team. 6)Early mail-in ballots are released on Election Day after 8 pm. 7)After Election Day, results will not be real-time but released in intervals. 8)Because Elections staff are receiving more ballots every day, then percent counted will go down. 9)One consultant I worked with, and against, loved to boast that he never lost the mail-in vote. That was true in the campaign that we worked together, and the one where we were opposed. Granted, in the latter my candidate won. The mail vote was nice, but I was the Volunteer Coordinator who recruited 500 people. Mail isn’t everything. 10)Not all mail-in ballots are the same. Early mail-ins tend Red; later ones tend Blue. It has been this way for decades. My opinion is that Reps tend to be more organized. Dems, less so. When you see the 8:15 vote totals, those are the early mail-ins and they will be more Phant. Later ones go the opposite direction 11)A similar Blue Shift occurs with in-person votes. Rural precincts are smaller and quicker to count. For example, Alpine County only has about 1200 residents. That isn’t even a precinct in LA. Small towns come next. The big cities take a lot longer. They will be later to report. If you are in line at 8 pm, you are allowed to vote, but pollworkers will stand behind the last person in line at that time and block any other voters. In college, I worked at the polling places. One Presidential it took 90 minutes for the line to vote. I was late for the Victory party. So sad. 12)So, in summary. Mail-in ballots take a lot more time. They will be Blue Shifted. And these results have happened in every CA election for decades. A friend of mine, Dean Andal, didn’t even know that he had won his Assembly seat for about a month. 13)These trends are the same as they have been for decades. State-wide, in a General, if a Rep doesn’t have at least 53% of the vote after the 8:15 totals, they will probably lose. 14)Now are the Dems cheating? Maybe. I was good friends with staff for B-1 Bob Dornan. Fraud may have cost him his Congressional seat. 15)But that was a long time ago. After Governor Arnold SchwarzenKennedy declared war on the CA GOP, the Golden State has been a Blue State. 16)The Dems may cheat, but they don’t need to. Hilton and Pratt will lose. I am not happy about, but it is true. My old boss, Morton Blackwell has said “That’s not the real nature of politics. I call that misconception the Sir Galahad theory ‘I will win because my heart is pure.’” 17) I get Quixotic campaigns, about making the Dems earn it and divert resources, I have worked on enough of them. But as I say, “Don’t bring your emotions to the marketplace. Hilton and Pratt would need a miracle. I don’t say this out of malice, but out of candor. 18)Watch out for people who want to manipulate you. 19)I have lived in CA, but it is not my home now. 20) My thanks to the CA SOS site and Yolo Count site for some help with the precise details.