House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on Monday that the California mayoral race result “stinks to high heaven” as the state’s vote-counting process drags on nearly a week after the primary.
President Donald Trump had previously said on social media that the race is “rigged” and called California a “3rd World Nation.”
Nearly a week after California’s primary, the Los Angeles mayoral results still remain up in the air with incumbent Mayor Karen Bass advancing to the November election and Republican actor Spencer Pratt and progressive City Council member Nithya Raman vying for the second-place spot.
Recent ballot drops saw Raman pull into second ahead of Pratt, potentially setting up a Democrat-on-Democrat showdown in the fall.
Johnson stopped short of calling the results rigged but lamented the slow pace at which California counts its ballots. California is a vote-by-mail state, meaning every registered voter is mailed a ballot. Election officials have 30 days from Election Day to process certain ballot types, according to the secretary of state, and mail ballots received within a week of Election Day are valid.
“They are counting votes weeks after the election,” Johnson told CNN. “We have entire nations, with huge populations like India, that can count their votes in 24 to 48 hours.”
“I’m not saying it’s rigged, I’m saying it stinks to high heaven, and everybody knows that,” Johnson continued. “Let’s remove the appearance of impropriety, let’s have what a concept, let’s have votes on an election the day of the election, that’s what many states are able to do. I think California is playing around with this.”
In California’s jungle primary, all candidates regardless of party face off, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the general election in November.
As election results trickled in Sunday, showing Pratt trailing Raman for the first time, Trump alleged the race was “rigged.”
“No way this could have happened. Rigged Election!” the president wrote in a post to Truth Social.
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“Do you think it’s appropriate that they have an election and five days later, they’re nowhere close to picking a winner?” the president said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that aired Sunday. “Do you know why they’re doing that? Because they’re cheating on the election.”
According to the Associated Press, Raman leads Pratt by just over 3,100 votes, with 27.1% of the ballots, compared to Pratt’s 26.7%. As of Monday morning — six days after the election — 83% of ballots had been counted.