OPINION:
On the face of it, the recent elections in Peru and Los Angeles, California, were very different.
One was international, the other local. One was won by a conservative, the other by a leftist. Yet for all their differences, they do have one thing in common: close elections decided by late mail-in ballots.
If election integrity is to be preserved, elections must be confined to a single day.
On Election Day in Los Angeles, it looked like Spencer Pratt would advance to face incumbent Karen Bass in the general election. However, as mail-in ballots were counted in the ensuing days, Mr. Pratt’s lead over third-place Nithya Raman dwindled until Ms. Raman eventually overtook Mr. Pratt.
Predictably, many on the political right denounced this as fraud. Keep counting ballots until the preferred candidate wins, as the allegation goes.
To be fair, California does not help itself with the speed (or lack thereof) with which it counts ballots. There are countries of 1 billion people that count votes faster. However, the appearance of fraud is not the same as evidence of it. And for all the X posts about fraud, no evidence has come to light proving anything of the kind.
Moreover, Democrats don’t need fraud to win in deep-blue Los Angeles. No Republican has been elected mayor there in 25 years.
Compare the L.A. mayoral race with the presidential election in Peru, where socialist Roberto Sanchez faced off with conservative Keiko Fujimori. Mr. Sanchez took a narrow lead late in the counting until overseas ballots came in. These overwhelmingly favored Ms. Fujimori. This is one of the facts Mr. Sanchez is using to allege irregularities in the counting.
There are a couple of takeaways from these elections in LA and Peru. First, mail-in ballots don’t automatically favor one side. Sometimes they benefit the left, other times, the right.
There are ways to shore up election integrity. First, count all ballots on Election Day. Second, discard any ballots received after Election Day.
Critics may say this deprives absentee voters of their right to vote, but the responsibility for submitting a ballot on time rests with the voter.
MATT COOKSON
Flower Mound, Texas
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