A teary-eyed LA City Councilwoman Nithya Raman addresses supporters at a campaign party. Credit: NBC Los Angeles screenshot
The Los Angeles Mayoral election is becoming increasingly questionable after a damning ballot drop gave Democratic City Councilwoman Nithya Raman a substantial gain, and Los Angeles is expected to continue counting ballots through the weekend.
The nearly 60,000 late mail-in ballots counted on Friday evening gave Raman over 23,000 new votes, while Pratt gained roughly 11,000.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has already been projected to advance to the November runoff. The top two candidates will advance if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote.
As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier, First Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli announced on Friday that his office is conducting “multiple election fraud investigations” with the FBI and a “comprehensive audit of California’s voter rolls” with the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
Assistant US Attorney Robert Renner was also seen observing the ballot processing center in LA County on Friday and reportedly asking questions about the process.
IT BEGINS: Spencer Pratt Overtakes Karen Bass in New Poll for Los Angeles Mayor
Spencer Pratt and Democrat Councilwoman Nithya Raman are locked in a race to determine who will face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in a runoff election. Pratt surged with an early lead over Raman, trailing incumbent Democrat Mayor Karen Bass by a slim margin, in early vote results on election night.
However, the late-arriving mail-in votes, which are expected to be roughly a third of the total vote, will take days to arrive under California’s lawless vote-by-mail system.
“The most recent mail-in ballots that were processed are favoring Democrats, as many analysts suggested they would. Inside the ballot processing center here in LA County, any ballot that was postmarked by Election Day, Tuesday, must be counted by law,” Fox’s Matt Finn reports from outside LA County’s ballot processing center.
“The process takes so long, in part because each ballot must have its signature verified, and if there’s an issue, there’s a 10-day period to have it cured,” he continued, noting that it’s “very likely” counting will continue into next week.
As ballots continue to be counted– or “found”– Pratt’s lead over Raman is rapidly diminishing.
As of 3:18 pm ET, Pratt was leading Raman by six points with 64.3% of expected votes counted. Pratt had 29.4% of the vote earlier, while Raman had 23.4%.
But now, as of 8:20 pm, with 71.2% of expected votes counted, Pratt leads by just 3.3% with more than 250,000 ballots outstanding. Patch reports, “Pratt on Friday had a 20,672-vote lead over Raman, down
from 33,076 votes the day before.”
This is a developing story.
The post THE FIX IS IN: Democrat LA Mayor Candidate Nithya Raman SURGES in Latest Ballot Dump Putting Spencer Pratt in Jeopardy appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.