OPINION:
Kelly Sadler begins her June 8 Commentary piece (“The statistical impossibility of L.A.’s mayor race,” Web, June 8) by recycling one popular theory of fraud: “In one of the ballot drops late on election night, Mr. Pratt received zero of 24,000 votes. SuperGrok estimates those odds at less than 1 in trillions.”
But on June 5 – three days before Ms. Sadler’s article – the Los Angeles Times investigated this allegation and found that the Associated Press simply added the tranche of Los Angeles County results in two different data files, separated by one minute.
That same day, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli – President Trump’s top prosecutor for Los Angeles – posted on social media, “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.”
Ms. Sadler had access to this information. It’s shocking that she still wrote what she wrote. And it’s shocking that The Washington Times published her piece without fact-checking that. If you want to know how conspiracies flourish and Americans lose confidence in election administration, this is how.
That’s not the only problem with the op-ed piece. Ms. Sadler also claims fraud because L.A. Mayor Karen Bass received more votes than candidate Nithya Raman in early results. But Ms. Raman received more votes than Ms. Bass in later results. This isn’t evidence of fraud.
Young voters in Los Angeles returned their ballots later in the election, and they preferred the progressive candidate over the incumbent. This type of data trend is well-known by those who study elections.
Ms. Sadler also alleges that Ms. Raman shot past opponent Spender Pratt for second place thanks to thousands of homeless voters on Skid Row: “The most concentrated batches of mail-in votes for Ms. Raman came from Skid Row.” But Ms. Bass, not Ms. Raman, won the precincts covering Skid Row.
Ms. Sadler concludes that “None of this will likely be proved,” echoing Rudy Giuliani’s remarkable post-2020 confession: “We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence.”
Perhaps the reason why none of these widespread election fraud theories is ever proved is because, well, they aren’t.
STEPHEN RICHER
Phoenix, Arizona
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