Los Angeles Mayoral Race Tightens As Federal Officials Launch Election Fraud Investigation
The race for second place in the Los Angeles mayoral primary is getting closer by the hour — and it’s happening against the backdrop of a growing federal investigation into alleged voting irregularities in California.
NITHYA RAMAN, a Democrat and current Los Angeles City Council member, has been steadily closing the gap on Republican candidate SPENCER PRATT over the past several days as ballot counting continues. What began as a comfortable lead for PRATT has narrowed to less than a single percentage point — and with votes still being tallied, neither candidate has been declared the winner of the second spot in the November runoff.
Where The Numbers Stand
As of the latest count, with approximately 78% of ballots processed, SPENCER PRATT holds 27.32% of the vote compared to NITHYA RAMAN’s 26.21%. That gap represents a dramatic shift from just days earlier, when PRATT led by more than three percentage points.
Saturday alone saw a significant wave of new ballots counted that contributed heavily to RAMAN’s surge. The day began with PRATT at 28.24% and RAMAN at 24.89% — by the time Saturday’s counting wrapped up, RAMAN had pulled to within a single percentage point.
Incumbent Mayor KAREN BASS has already secured her place in the November general election, leading the field with nearly 35% of the vote. The question now is which candidate will join her on the ballot — PRATT or RAMAN — and that answer may not come for several more days.
Federal Investigation Enters The Picture
While vote counting continues, the race has taken on an entirely different dimension with the announcement of federal investigations into claims of election irregularities in both the LOS ANGELES mayoral contest and the CALIFORNIA gubernatorial race.
U.S. ATTORNEY BILL ESSAYLI announced the investigations this past Friday, though he stopped short of naming any specific cases or detailing the nature of the allegations under review. In his statement, ESSAYLI said officials would “follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent.”
The announcement drew significant attention, particularly after PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP amplified the claims on his TRUTH SOCIAL platform. In a post, TRUMP alleged widespread problems with the California vote count, pointing specifically to the time it was taking for ballots to be fully tallied.
“Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting DELAY???” TRUMP wrote, calling for answers on what he characterized as an unusually slow process.
What Comes Next
California’s vote counting process has historically taken longer than other states, as the state allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received and counted for several days afterward. Election officials have not commented specifically on the federal investigation, and no evidence of actual fraud has been presented publicly at this time.
The race between NITHYA RAMAN and SPENCER PRATT remains one of the most closely watched contests in the country right now — both because of its proximity and because of the unusual circumstances surrounding it.
With tens of thousands of ballots still to be processed, the gap between the two candidates could narrow further, hold steady, or even reverse. Every update to the count carries the potential to change the outcome entirely.
For LOS ANGELES voters and political observers across the country, the wait continues — and the stakes feel higher with every batch of ballots that comes in.
