Ballot Drops Flip: Mayoral Race Highlights Count System

A former reality TV star’s surprising run for Los Angeles mayor is hanging by a thread — and how it ends may say more about California’s ballot-counting system than about the candidate himself.

Story Snapshot

Spencer Pratt, known from the reality show “The Hills,” held a shrinking lead over Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman for the second spot in the November mayoral runoff against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.
With 78% of ballots counted, Pratt led Raman 27.3% to 26.2% — a margin of roughly 7,500 votes — but every new ballot drop had favored Raman.
California law allows counties up to 30 days to count provisional and late-arriving mail ballots, meaning the race remained mathematically unresolved.
Some Pratt supporters claimed the race was being “stolen,” while election observers noted the narrowing margin reflected a standard California late-count pattern, not irregularity.

A Shrinking Lead in a Race Nobody Predicted

Spencer Pratt entered the Los Angeles mayoral primary as a political outsider with no governing experience, yet he built a substantial early lead. With 66% of expected votes counted by the Thursday after Election Day, Pratt held 29% of the vote to Raman’s 23%. ^[4] But successive ballot drops steadily eroded that cushion. By Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported Pratt had fallen to just over 27% while Raman climbed to slightly over 26%, cutting his lead to roughly one percentage point. ^[3]

CBS News Los Angeles quoted analyst Bill Mitchell saying that Pratt had been “losing share of the vote with every one of these new ballot dumps” and that the trend was expected to continue. ^[2] Fox 11 Los Angeles reported the most recent county tally showing Pratt at 174,260 votes, or 28.24%, compared to Raman’s 153,588, or 24.89% — figures that reflected an earlier snapshot before subsequent drops further narrowed the gap. ^[1] The race remained unresolved, with the county planning daily result updates through at least June 12. ^[3]

How California’s Counting System Creates These Cliffhangers

California’s vote-counting rules are a recurring source of suspense in close races. Mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day are accepted for days afterward, and counties have up to 30 days to process provisional ballots. CBS News reported that the exact number of outstanding ballots in Los Angeles was unknown at the time of its reporting. ^[2] This extended counting window is not unique to this race — it is the same mechanism that has repeatedly flipped apparent election-night leaders in California contests over the past decade.

The structural reality is straightforward: in California, election-night results are always partial results. The Los Angeles Times confirmed that Los Angeles County planned to release updated tallies daily and that election-day postmarked mail ballots would continue to arrive and be counted. ^[3] Raman’s consistent gains in each successive drop indicated her support was concentrated in the types of ballots — late mail-in and provisional — that are processed last, a pattern common among urban Democratic voters in the state.

Fraud Claims Surface, But Evidence Remains Absent

As Pratt’s lead shrank, some of his supporters and online commentators began alleging the race was being stolen. Social media posts accused election officials of manufacturing a Raman comeback, and at least one commentator framed the narrowing margin as evidence of fraud. Pratt himself publicly expressed frustration with the vote-counting process. ^[5] These claims circulated widely enough that they became a secondary story alongside the actual vote count.

MAGA’s now baselessly claiming the LA mayoral race is being “stolen” from Spencer Pratt due to his lead narrowing as mail-in ballots come in, giving Councilmember Nithya Raman an edge. https://t.co/qkT20VXb1D

— Julianne McShane (@JulianneMcShane) June 7, 2026

No evidence of irregularity appeared in any of the official reporting. The Los Angeles County registrar’s process — releasing updated tallies as batches of mail and provisional ballots are verified — is the same procedure used in every California election. An opinion piece in CalMatters noted that the race dynamic itself, regardless of outcome, had produced little of substance for Los Angeles voters, arguing that a Pratt-versus-Bass runoff would offer the city a binary choice between a celebrity outsider and an embattled incumbent rather than a serious policy debate. ^[6] Whether Pratt ultimately holds on or Raman overtakes him, the race has already illustrated how thin the line is between a political sensation and a footnote — and how easily distrust fills the space left by slow ballot counting.