OPINION:
Spencer Pratt seemed to be a viable contender in the race for the next mayor of Los Angeles, with Mayor Karen Bass fighting for her job and council member Nithya Raman in third place. But then something happened.
Mail-in ballots started rolling in and all of a sudden Mr. Pratt was out.
But this isn’t the first time that mail-in ballots have made a difference in the outcome of races and ballot measures in California that are essentially “liberal” vs “conservative.” More often than not, mail-in ballots have shifted races from what started out looking like a conservative outcome to a liberal one.
Ballot Measure ER — increasing the sales tax in Los Angeles County from 9.75% to 10.25% for five years to give funding to local health departments and services — saw a similar outcome. What sort of person would vote to increase taxes?
So what’s up with these mail-in ballots in the LA mayoral race?
Conspiracy theorists are already claiming that mail-in ballots are a liberal stop-gap measure designed to swing the vote in favor of a liberal outcome if it appears that a conservative outcome is likely to prevail. And where does this sudden surge come from? The theorists claim that they are being “harvested” at the street level — from the homeless, mostly, and LA County has tens of thousands of them.
That’s more than enough to shift the outcome of races like these.
I think the answer is as simple as laziness. Many liberals just don’t bother going to the polls (it’s inconvenient) or they wait until the last minute to mail the things in if they do bother to vote.
But one can see how such outcomes fuel accusations of voter fraud.
ARTHUR SAGINIAN
Santa Clarita, California
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