Candidate Nithya Raman in the Los Angeles mayoral race came in third place on election night, June 2, so far behind second place finisher Spencer Platt that she essentially conceded the election in a tearful farewell. And then, miracle of miracle, over the next few days as more and more mail-in ballots kept rolling in, Raman suddenly surged in the votes, often exceeding first place Karen Bass in some counts and doubling the percentage of her election day returns to the extent that by Sunday she surpassed Pratt in the vote, thus apparently landing a spot in the November runoff elections.
Oh, and for those of you who expressed skepticism about this electoral miracle in the midst of a questionable vote count of the mass ballot mailings in which voter identification requirements were at best laughable, Politico has written off your concerns as "baseless."
The Politico California damage control team of Melanie Mason, Dustin Gardiner, and Blake Jones have already described any reasonable skepticism as, wait for it, "conspiracy theories" on Monday in "The online meltdown over LA’s vote count."
The best way to describe how Team Politico performed their shtick would be cherry-picking. They focused in on some minor details, while completely ignoring substantive facts that upend their damage control. Here is a glaring example:
Social media sites, particularly X, were awash with conspiracy theories about Nithya Raman’s surge since Election Day. By Sunday, Raman had pulled ahead of Pratt by roughly 3,000 votes, making her the heavy favorite to take on Bass in the November runoff — and Pratt’s online fans handled the development much like Quan anticipated.
By now, certain corners of the social media ecosystem have settled, baselessly, on an ironclad consensus: The election was rigged. One widely-circulated claim alleged that a suspicious ballot drop included, improbably, zero votes for Pratt. In fact, the charge stemmed from a misreading of election data that had a one-minute lag in updates, the Los Angeles Times reported. Still skeptics were unconvinced when Bill Essayli, the Donald Trump-picked first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California who said he’s launched “multiple” unspecified election fraud investigations, debunked the claim on X.
Their story was posted at 9 AM. That is important to note because the prior day at 12:47 PM, that very same U.S. attorney, Bill Essayli that they gleefully cited also posted this highly damaging information about the integrity of the California election:
California Is Blocking a Federal Audit of Its Voter Rolls
— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) June 7, 2026
California allows first-time voters to register using forms of ID that most Americans would find surprising, including:
-Gym membership card
-Employer ID card
-Credit or debit card
-Prescription drug label
-Insurance… pic.twitter.com/kOEOzpctmb
The only way to explain this significant skip of what the U.S. attorney posted on Sunday afternoon was that it was a very intentional cherry pick since it counters their argument for the supposed integrity of the election. Oh, and the Politico crew citing very liberal media sources to bolster their argument is less than convincing considering the bias of the sources:
For the last few days, reporters — notably, The New York Times’ Ken Bensinger and CNN’s Elex Michaelson — have been trying, often in vain, to refute falsehoods and explain the precedent of progressive candidates getting a boost off of late votes.
And no defense of California's flawed election system is complete without them bringing up those whom they consider the usual culprits:
But the cheating fixation persists, in no small part because it’s amplified by the most powerful man in the world. Trump said during an interview on Meet the Press on Sunday the California elections were rigged — as well as repeating his baseless claims about the 2020 presidential election being fraudulent — before he abruptly ended his interview with Kristen Welker and walked out. Newsom’s press office declared the outburst “the most severe case of California Derangement Syndrome we’ve ever seen.”
Pratt’s post-election posts have taken a conspiratorial turn. On Friday, he urged his supporters to be patient; by Sunday, he was intimating the late votes for Raman were entirely due to homeless people voting for her.
So happy cherry-picking, Politico. As more election discrepancies are unearthed that technique will certainly need to be applied again ever more frequently.
