Did a late-night ballot drop of 24,000 votes give Spencer Pratt no votes in the Los Angeles mayor race and is that evidence of fraud in the vote counting? No, that's not true: The Los Angeles Times explained there was a one-minute lag between its receipt of the Associated Press automated feed of thousands of Pratt votes and the counts for Karen Bass and Nithya Raman. The top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles said his office reviewed the claim of a zero vote update for Pratt and concluded it was false.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published by the @C_3C_3 on X June 4, 2026. It read:
Spencer Pratt got 0 out of 24,000 votes in a late night LA ballot drop.
0/24,000
A guy getting around 30% support got 0 out of 24,000.
Astronomically small probability of happening.
Impossible.
California no longer even hides it.
Doors need to be kicked in.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of x.com/c_3c_3)
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a post (archived here) on X.com shared on June 5, 2026, that his office investigated the claim of a suspicious zero ballot count for Pratt and found it to be false. It read:
There was a claim circulating on social media about an election night ballot update at the Los Angeles Registrar of Voters where one candidate received zero votes.
We reviewed official county records. The claim is false. Each candidate received votes in every update.
My office will continue monitoring the election counting process and will follow the evidence wherever it leads.
If anyone has credible information concerning election fraud, please send it to:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of https://x.com/usattyessayli)
Citizens can directly access the Los Angeles mayoral race results on the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk election results website (archived here), but the counts posted on media websites and shown in TV coverage are delivered through an automated system managed by the Associated Press. The Los Angeles Times explained in a June 5, 2026, article (archived here) what happened on its website in the early hours of vote counting after the polls closed on June 2, 2026.
According to a Times review of election night results data, The Times pulled data from the AP's feed at approximately 8:35 p.m. that included 0 new votes for Pratt and eight other candidates. When The Times' system next checked for new numbers a minute later, there was an update with votes for Pratt but no new votes for Raman, Bass and others.
The Times article included a statement from the Associated Press that said their systems pushed out two consecutive updates one minute apart, sending the Bass and Raman votes first:
The AP vote count receives updates as provided by election officials and adds them to our vote count. What happened in this case is that there was a lag in an automated update such that some candidates' votes were added in one update and the other candidates followed about a minute later. Specifically, an electronic update from the Los Angeles County website pulled in votes for only one group of candidates, including Karen Bass and Nithya Raman. Exactly one minute later, the electronic update picked up the votes for another group of candidates including Spencer Pratt. Taken together, the updates included 21,870 votes for Pratt, 12,850 votes for Bass and 9,521 votes for Raman, along with votes for other candidates.
Lead Stories has debunked previous false claims of stolen votes resulting from glitches in the AP data feeds, including a claim in November 2020 that thousands of votes for Donald Trump were wrongly credited to Joe Biden in the presidential race. That "swap" was caused by a glitch in the AP system that was not reflected in the official vote counts.
