Spencer Pratt FINISHED – Late Votes Derail Momentum

One shaky-looking “zero-votes” screenshot turned a normal slow-count election into a full-blown fraud thriller.

Story Snapshot

Spencer Pratt started election night in second place but slipped to third as late mail ballots were counted.
A viral claim said 24,000 ballots were added with zero votes for Pratt, igniting fraud allegations.
County data and the Associated Press later showed that “zero” moment was a split update, not a real ballot batch.
The late surge for Nithya Raman matches well-known California mail voting patterns, not proven cheating.

How Spencer Pratt Went From Rising Star To Runoff Spectator

Los Angeles voters watched a rare thing on primary night: a Republican, reality television veteran Spencer Pratt, opening in second place in a deep-blue city, behind Mayor Karen Bass and ahead of progressive council member Nithya Raman.^[1] Early returns came from in-person votes and mail ballots that arrived and were processed before Election Day.^[1] Those buckets skewed more toward Pratt than what was coming next. Many conservatives saw that early map and assumed the story was written. It was not.

Los Angeles County then started counting the mail ballots that arrived close to Election Day, which tend to come from more Democratic and more progressive voters.^[1] As those ballots were added over several days, Bass held a strong first-place lead, but Raman began to eat into Pratt’s margin update after update.^[1]^[3] Local coverage described her as “surging” and “overtaking” him as the count climbed into the 80-percent-plus range, eventually pushing Pratt into third and out of the runoff.^[3]

The “Zero Votes In 24,000 Ballots” Claim That Lit The Match

Amid that slow shift, one screenshot exploded online: a feed showing a large batch of roughly 24,000 new ballots where Bass and Raman gained tens of thousands of votes and Spencer Pratt seemed to gain none.^[2]^[4] High-profile voices shared it as proof that something in Los Angeles was “rigged.”^[4] For many on the right, who already distrusted mail voting, the idea that a Republican could get zero votes in a huge drop felt beyond belief. Suspicion hardened into certainty almost overnight.

The problem is that this dramatic image did not match what actually happened in the count. The Los Angeles Times later dug into the raw Associated Press data and county logs and found that what looked like one huge, one-sided batch was really two back-to-back electronic updates about a minute apart.^[2] The first showed votes for Bass and Raman but not Pratt; the second showed votes for Pratt and other candidates but no new votes for Bass or Raman.^[2] Taken together, those two updates contained more than twenty thousand new votes for Pratt.

What The County And Associated Press Say Really Happened

The Associated Press said its system pulled in one part of the county’s data first, then the second part moments later, creating a misleading picture on sites that refreshed between those pulls.^[2] The wire service explained that the total batch, once both pieces were in, added 21,870 votes for Pratt, 12,850 for Bass, and 9,521 for Raman, plus votes for minor candidates.^[2] That means there was no real-world pile of ballots with zero votes for Pratt; there was only a split feed.

Los Angeles County’s registrar spokesman backed that up. He stated flatly that the office never issued an official update in which Pratt received zero votes.^[2] Every results report the county released, on election night and after, showed Pratt gaining votes in each batch.^[2] That is a testable statement against public records. So far, critics have not produced county data that shows a genuine zero-for-Pratt batch. What they do have is that confusing first Associated Press snapshot, divorced from the second.

Why Late Democratic Surges Are Normal In California’s Mail System

California’s rules help explain why Raman’s late movement fits a familiar pattern rather than standing out as proof of fraud. The state sends a ballot to every registered voter and allows mail ballots to arrive after Election Day if they were sent on time. Counties then spend days processing signatures, checking envelopes, and scanning ballots before final certification.^[3] That means big ballot batches hit the public dashboards in waves long after the TV networks call election night “over.”

Latest LA mayoral primary (92% counted, June 8):
Karen Bass 34.3% (275,992 votes)
Nithya Raman 28.5% (229,576)
Spencer Pratt 25.8% (207,757)

Bass & Raman advance to November runoff. Pratt eliminated. Others far behind. Data from LA County & reports.

— Grok (@grok) June 9, 2026

Data from this race suggest that many Democrats, and especially very progressive voters, held their ballots until late and then mailed or dropped them off near the deadline.^[1]^[3] Those voters leaned heavily toward Bass and Raman, not Pratt.^[1]^[3] So each late wave chipped away at Pratt’s early lead, exactly the way later-counted mail ballots shifted margins in other recent California contests. Conservative viewers may not like the policy, but that is different from proving someone cheated inside that policy.

What Scrutiny Still Makes Sense — And Where Common Sense Kicks In

None of this means citizens should stop asking hard questions about election systems. Public records on batch logs, chain-of-custody, and signature checks matter in every county. Conservatives are right to demand that those records be clear, released quickly, and easy to audit. But on the central claim that a 24,000-ballot drop gave Pratt zero votes, the facts on the table come down on one side: the county and independent review say that claim is false.^[2]

From a common-sense and conservative view, the better fight is not to cling to a debunked “zero votes” myth, but to fix the rules people dislike in daylight. Push for tighter deadlines on mail returns, faster counting, and fuller real-time transparency so strange-looking data glitches do not fuel wild theories. Because as this Los Angeles mayor’s race shows, one misleading screenshot can move millions of minds faster than the truth can catch up.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]