Feds Launch Probe Into California's Elections
Days after California’s primary election, the votes are still being counted, and the winners are still unknown, and no one, save for California officials, seems happy about it.
“The fact that California 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."
And President Donald Trump is now demanding answers.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday, targeting what he called the deliberate manipulation of California's governor and Los Angeles mayoral races.
"There's BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California. 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???"
In a follow-up post, Trump escalated further.
"The Dumocrats are at it again! They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA 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."
United States Attorney for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli, confirmed in a post on X that his office “has multiple election fraud investigations underway” in California, and is coordinating with the FBI in Los Angeles.
“California’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 California averaged 38 percent 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 California from the comparison its leaders apparently dread. "California 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 California can tabulate its votes. Colombia held a presidential election on Sunday, and 99.98 percent of the result was in on Monday morning. Japan also counts most of its votes overnight. And in the UK (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 California is the slowest state in the nation to count votes.
It's hard to overstate how much of an outlier California is for its slow vote-counting relative to literally any other state or almost any other industrialized democracy. pic.twitter.com/KIvABnIKgn
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 5, 2026
California 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 California's sluggishness were actually producing superior accuracy.
Still, Silver's data suggests 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 pandemic in 2020, and finally made it permanent in 2022. Under current California law, every registered voter automatically receives a mail ballot, and any ballot postmarked by Election Day 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 California 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 California’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.”