{"id":352467,"date":"2026-06-09T02:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T02:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/352467\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T02:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T02:08:08","slug":"why-la-voters-have-to-wait-to-find-out-winners-in-the-june-2-primary-election-whittier-daily-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/352467\/","title":{"rendered":"Why LA voters have to wait to find out winners in the June 2 primary election \u2013 Whittier Daily News"},"content":{"rendered":"

California\u2019s notoriously slow process of counting ballots<\/a> and certifying an election is once again a topic of debate, including in Los Angeles County, where voters have been waiting for nearly a week to find out which two candidates will advance to the general election in the race for governor<\/a> and the Los Angeles mayoral contest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

California is one of 14 states<\/a> that allow ballots that don\u2019t arrive at local election offices until after Election Day to still be counted as long as they\u2019re postmarked by Election Day. In California, ballots that arrive up to seven days after an election must be counted if they meet the postmark deadline.<\/p>\n

That fact, combined with the sheer size of L.A. County, which has nearly 5.9 million registered voters, or a quarter of all registered voters statewide, and the volume of ballots received on or close to Election Day is what causes the counting to extend well beyond election night, said Michael Sanchez, spokesperson for the L.A. County registrar\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Also see: AP projects Nithya Raman advances to runoff against Bass in LA mayoral race<\/a><\/p>\n

He said it\u2019s not the ballot counting itself that takes the most time but the steps required along the way, including receiving ballots, verifying voter signatures, processing vote-by-mail ballots, reviewing provisional ballots and ensuring all ballots are accounted for.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur focus is on ensuring every valid ballot is counted accurately, not simply counting ballots as quickly as possible,\u201d Sanchez said in an email Monday.<\/p>\n

In neighboring Orange County, registrar Bob Page noted on LinkedIn that the state Legislature also set a deadline for how long voters have to \u201ccure,\u201d or correct, their ballot if, say, the signature on the envelope doesn\u2019t match the signature the registrar\u2019s office has on file.<\/p>\n

For this primary election, the ballot curing deadline is 5 p.m. June 24, and county election officials aren\u2019t allowed to certify election results until June 26.<\/p>\n

But President Donald Trump has long raised concerns<\/a>, without evidence, that allowing ballots that arrive after Election Day to count leads to election fraud.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy the vote counting DELAY???\u201d the president posted on social media last week.<\/p>\n

He suggested the state\u2019s Democrats were somehow cheating so that two candidates he favors \u2014 Republicans Steve Hilton in the governor\u2019s race and Spencer Pratt in the L.A. mayoral race \u2014 would be bumped from the coveted No. 2 spot to advance to the general election.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see what\u2019s happening in California; they\u2019re rigging the election,\u201d he told reporters<\/a> during an Oval Office gathering Thursday.<\/p>\n

California officials, including Secretary of State Shirley Weber, have repeatedly refuted claims of fraud and, in fact, have defended the state\u2019s slower process as critical to ensuring the counts are accurate.<\/p>\n

As of early Monday evening, Hilton remained in second place in the governor\u2019s race, with Democrat Tom Steyer in third place.\u00a0The Associated Press already declared last week that Democrat Xavier Becerra<\/a>, in the No. 1 spot, would advance to the November runoff, but had not yet called who would join him.<\/p>\n

Hilton is scheduled to hold a news conference outside the L.A. County registrar\u2019s office in Norwalk on Tuesday morning, demanding a faster election reporting process.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery vote must be counted accurately. No one disputes that,\u201d Hilton said in a written statement Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cLong delays do not build confidence. They breed confusion, frustration, speculation and distrust,\u201d Hilton added. \u201cCalifornia voters deserve accuracy, transparency, and timely results. That should not be too much to ask of the fourth-largest economy in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the L.A. mayoral race, City Councilmember Nithya Raman overtook Pratt<\/a> in the vote count Sunday after several days of vote counting. And on Monday evening, the Associated Press officially called it<\/a>: Raman, a progressive Democrat, would join Democratic Mayor Karen Bass in the general election.<\/p>\n

As of Monday evening, the L.A. County registrar of voters estimated it had about 148,000 ballots left to be processed. More than 2 million ballots had already been counted, it said, which is nearly 35.5% of registered voters.<\/p>\n

Although state officials have defended California\u2019s election process, the state could be forced to change its practice if the U.S. Supreme Court rules that ballots that arrive at an elections office after Election Day \u2014 even if they\u2019re postmarked by that day \u2014 can\u2019t be counted.<\/p>\n

The court could rule on a case coming out of Mississippi<\/a> this month.<\/p>\n

If the court strikes down such grace periods, the implications could extend well beyond California and 13 other states that give a grace period for regular ballots, depending on how the court ultimately rules. A total of 29 states allow extra time for at least some mail voters, including those who cast military and overseas ballots, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Voting Rights Lab.<\/p>\n

Sanchez, the spokesperson for the L.A. County registrar\u2019s office, said whether California should change how it counts votes is a policy question left for lawmakers and voters, not election administrators, to decide.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur responsibility is to administer elections in accordance with the laws,\u201d Sanchez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder current law, vote-by-mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and received within the statutory deadline are valid and must be counted,\u201d he continued. \u201cOur role is to implement those requirements accurately, consistently and impartially, regardless of the policy debate surrounding them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California\u2019s notoriously slow process of counting ballots and certifying an election is once again a topic of debate,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1400,7,204,92191,48,52,51,47,137,141044,50,49,100,13,136],"class_list":["post-352467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-2026-elections","tag-california","tag-election","tag-governor-race","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-los-angeles-county-elections","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}