Trump calls California primary election fraud as its red mirage fades to typical blue

After President Trump called California's recent primary "rigged," a familiar playbook emerges that forecasts what the president's election attacks may look like moving toward November's midterms.

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

California's primary election day was last Tuesday, so almost a week ago now. But the state is one of the slowest to count votes in the country. So we're still a long way from knowing the final results, and that has President Trump pushing a familiar story.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Do you think it's appropriate that they have an election, and five days later they're nowhere close to picking the winner?

KRISTEN WELKER: State and local officials acknowledge they are slow. They're urging...

TRUMP: No. They're crooked.

WELKER: They're urging the votes...

KELLY: That is the president on NBC's "Meet The Press" this weekend. Host Kristen Welker pushed him on his false election claims, which led to him getting up and abruptly ending the interview.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")

TRUMP: Your elections in this country...

WELKER: You went to court.

TRUMP: ...We're like a third world country.

WELKER: But sir...

TRUMP: Your elections are crooked, and you're crooked, and "Meet The Press" is crooked...

WELKER: But Mr. President...

TRUMP: ...And so is ABC and CBS and CNN.

WELKER: But Mr. President...

TRUMP: You're a one-sided crooked network. Sorry. Let's call it quits 'cause I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.

WELKER: Mr. President, let's - please...

KELLY: Joining me now to talk through Trump's claims, also that slow count in California and what all this could mean for the upcoming midterms, NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks. Hi there.

MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.

KELLY: Hey. So to ask the basic question, is there any evidence of fraud with the California vote counting process?

PARKS: No. Just like there was no evidence that there was fraud in 2020 - widespread fraud, I should say - even though, as you heard Trump say, he still to this day claims that there was. But both that election and this one in California present situations that do lend themselves pretty easily to these sort of fraud claims.

KELLY: OK.

PARKS: Just like Trump looked like he was ahead when votes started coming in in 2020 - started to be counted - a candidate in the Los Angeles Mayor's race named Spencer Pratt looked like he was going to make it to the general in that state's top two primary. But then, as more ballots have been counted, Pratt dropped to third, which is fueling a lot of this conspiracy theorizing because Pratt had really caught on with national conservatives.

But this is all pretty easily explained. In recent years, Democrats tend to vote by mail more than Republicans do, and mail ballots take longer to count than in-person votes do. So we'll sometimes see something known as the red mirage, where a Republican candidate looks like they're ahead, and then they fade as mail ballots are counted.

KELLY: OK. That makes sense. It does seem unusual, though, that California does take so long to count. Do we know why?

PARKS: It's really a policy discussion. California is one of the easiest states to vote in, but some of those convenience measures come at the cost of super-quick counting. The biggest one is related to how mail ballots are counted and processed. Officials need to scan these mail ballots. They need to check the signatures to make sure of identities. They have to get rid of the envelopes to make sure the ballot is ready to be counted, right? So all of that is fine if the ballot is returned early. But roughly a quarter of people turn in their mail ballots on Election Day, Stephen Richer told me. He's a former voting official from Arizona who's now a fellow at the CATO Institute in Harvard University.

STEPHEN RICHER: That process isn't even getting started until the evening of Election Day or until a day or two after. And that's especially the case when we're talking about millions - legitimately millions - of mail ballots that are dropped off on Election Day.

PARKS: There are a couple other policies that contribute too. California also accepts mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but don't arrive until - up until a week after. So election officials are still receiving ballots that will count even...

KELLY: Today.

PARKS: ...Today.

KELLY: Like, right now. Yeah.

PARKS: Exactly. So all of this contributes to longer vote counting.

KELLY: And how much of an outlier is California? We've already had a lot of primaries this year, including in a lot of places where people also vote by mail...

PARKS: Yeah.

KELLY: ...And this is the first time it's popping up.

PARKS: It's a really - it's really interesting - right? - because California is slow, but they're not actually that slow compared to some other states. You take 2024, for instance. I was emailing with MIT political scientist Charles Stewart. He assembled a dataset that looked at how quickly each state counted their votes in the 2024 election, and he shared it with me. It took roughly 10 days for California to get to 95% of their votes counted. Sounds like a lot, but it took Alaska roughly the same amount, and it took states like Mississippi and Utah something like eight days - so not that far off.

KELLY: Interesting. So let me ask about what we may be learning in terms of a playbook for November and those midterms which are coming up. California, as we noted - it has multiple competitive races - could determine who controls the House of Representatives here in Washington. Might we see this dynamic play out again?

PARKS: I think almost certainly. I mean, the handful of races that we're talking about in California right now are close, and when that is the case, the vote-counting process gets spotlighted because it takes longer to call the races. That could be the case again in November. Stephen Richer, the former voting official we heard from earlier, said absent some big policy changes, the only difference that we're going to see is an even tenser political environment.

RICHER: I think we're going to be in for a real slog with California come November, and I think that the volume will be at least 10 times what it is right now.

PARKS: Richer, who is a Republican, noted that Trump has been falsely claiming fraud about elections that he doesn't like for 10 years - since the Iowa Caucuses in 2016 - so there's no reason to think he'll stop now.

KELLY: That is NPR's Miles Parks, covering voting and elections for us. Thank you, Miles.

PARKS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.