Long after Election Day, the ballots comin’ down
No IDs or postmarks wherever they are found
The laws make cheating legal, and Democrats applaud
And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the fraud?

Fed up Angelinos, having watched their city burn
Voted for a newcomer, then saw the tallies turn
The loser makes the runoff, no one thinks that’s odd
And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the fraud?

When votes are manufactured, don’t bother keeping score
Look into the future; this is what’s in store
Don’t know who can stop it, the DOJ or God
So I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the fraud?

(With apologies to Creedence Clearwater Revival.)

The primary elections in California last week were yet further evidence of why we need federal laws that protect the integrity of our elections. As virtually everyone who hasn’t been living under a rock knows, former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt stunned everyone with his groundbreaking campaign for mayor of Los Angeles. Pratt was running against unpopular incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, who has been widely criticized for her actions (and inaction) that exacerbated the devastating fires that destroyed the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles in January of last year, including cutting $17 million from the LA Fire Department’s budget, leaving local water reservoirs (and thus fire hydrants) completely empty during wildfire season, and taking a trip to Ghana, despite being warned of the risk of wildfires at that time.

In addition to her incompetence, Pratt called Bass out for her background as a communist who visited Cuba more than a dozen times with the revolutionary Venceremos Brigade.

Pratt’s other opponent was Nithya Raman, a city councilwoman and self-proclaimed socialist politically to the left of Bass who’s best known for rolling her eyes at constituents complaining about homeless encampments near grade schools.

Pratt’s brilliant ads (and those created by fans) took social media by storm, and his performance in the only debate the candidates held further strengthened his position. Although most observers predicted Bass would advance easily in the “jungle primary” (in which only the top two candidates receiving the most votes move on to the general election in November), Pratt was widely expected to come in second place.

That’s exactly what appeared to have happened by the end of the night on Election Day, June 3. Bass’ results were embarrassingly bad for an incumbent; she garnered slightly more than a third of all votes cast (around 35%). Pratt was holding steady at around 27% of the vote, and Raman was well behind him.

Indeed, Raman herself knew she’d lost; she gave a tearful concession speech that night.

But over the next few days, things changed.

Day after day, “mail-in ballots” poured in. And with each new ballot drop — wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles — disproportionately large numbers of them had been cast for Raman. By Monday of this week, Raman had overtaken Pratt and was declared the second winner in the mayoral primary.

Plenty of things make this result suspect. First, there’s no reason why mailed-in ballots that arrived after Election Day would have a distribution that was so markedly different than those that were mailed before Election Day. One explanation that was offered is that Democrats waited until the very end to mail in their votes. But that doesn’t explain the surge for Raman, whose popularity was declining in the days leading up to the election, not increasing.

To be clear, what’s remarkable isn’t that Pratt received a smaller share of the post-Election Day ballot drops (although that’s certainly suspicious); it’s that the distribution was vastly different between Bass and Raman. Day after day, drop after drop, Bass’ share of the total votes remained completely flat; she received an even smaller percentage of later votes than she had leading up to and including Election Day. Raman, on the other hand, went from receiving approximately 20%-22% of the votes to receiving more than 40% of the ballots, in some cases, that were arriving after June 3.

What makes this even more implausible is that Raman lost her own district.

So, who cast all those votes for Raman? Who knows?

Information coming out now is creating more suspicion. Skid Row residents are telling reporters that they are routinely paid to cast votes for Democrat candidates. Independent journalist James O'Keefe has exposed schemes to encourage forged votes and to bribe the homeless to register and vote with cash and drugs.

We may never know the truth. As I wrote last week, California’s laws are designed to make fraud legal and election integrity illegal (and the state is currently blocking a federal audit).

Anyone can register to vote in California; no driver’s license or Social Security number is required. Furthermore, California takes ridiculous documents for voter registration, including gym membership cards, debit cards, prescription drug labels and health insurance cards. (Keep in mind that illegal immigrants get free health insurance in California.)

California allows unlimited “ballot harvesting,” and the “signatures” that are technically required by law can be dots, blots, straight lines, smudges or even smiley faces; ballot harvesters can “witness” those “signatures,” and there is no way to independently verify them.

As we saw, California also allows counts mailed-in ballots that arrive up to a week after Election Day. We were told that these ballots needed to be “postmarked” by Election Day. But as Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton pointed out in several social media posts, “postmark” includes someone writing the date on the ballot envelope.

Pratt may have been cheated out of the Los Angeles mayor’s office (for now), but it’s possible he’ll have the last laugh. When asked whether he would consider working with Pratt on the campaign trail and in the governor’s office, Hilton was enthusiastic: “Of course everyone talks about (Pratt’s) incredible campaign ads, but … he had incredibly strong, substantive policies, especially on homelessness. That’s exactly what we need, not just in LA but statewide. One hundred percent, I’d love that.”

Could a Hilton-Pratt team overcome the legalized cheating that is baked into California’s elections? We’ll see.

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