JD Vance says California election ‘seems pretty shady,’ as GOP spreads more lies about vote counting 

Yet more top Republicans are joining the chorus of lies and conspiracy theories about California’s slow vote-counting. 

“They’re still receiving ballots and the way that they’re coming in just so happens to work out such that the Republican is getting kicked out of the final two so it’s a Democrat versus Democrat runoff,” Vice President JD Vance said on Fox News Monday. “That seems pretty shady to me.”

Vance’s comments come after President Donald Trump spent the past week falsely claiming California’s primary elections were rigged. 

The crescendo of lies, which has also included responses from several other top Republicans and conservatives, suggests the modern-day GOP now sees almost any election in which its candidates lose as illegitimate on its face. And it offers an ominous sign for November, when far higher-stakes contests will be on the ballot.

On Sunday, Trump crashed out in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, when host Kristen Welker pushed back on his election fraud claims. 

“You know that these elections are rigged,” Trump snapped at Welker before he stormed off the set. “Your network knows that they’re rigged. You know that I won an election in a landslide, and I got 94% bad press, because you have no credibility.”

The epicenter of California’s rigged election claims is the Los Angeles mayoral race. With 92% of the votes counted as of Tuesday, Republican Spencer Pratt’s better-than-expected third-place performance in a deep blue city wasn’t enough to beat out incumbent mayor Karen Bass (D), or the progressive challenger, Nithya Raman (D). But it was just enough to set off a wave of election conspiracies.

Because of the widespread use of mail-in voting in California — ballots postmarked by Election Day but received up to seven days later are counted — it can take days or weeks for close races to be called in the Golden State. The prolonged vote-counting process makes it easy for election deniers and anti-voting activists to spread false claims and sow distrust in the voting process. 

But the conspiracies centered on Tuesday’s primary election, which started last week at the fringe of the party, have now taken off within the mainstream GOP. 

“I’m not saying it’s rigged, I’m saying it stinks to high heaven,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) told reporters Monday.

When pressed about what evidence there is suggesting impropriety, Johnson said that “some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it’s impossible to prove.” 

“But I think everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong here,” he added. 

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R) has weighed in, too. Asked by a reporter Tuesday what evidence he’s seen to back up Trump’s claim that California’s elections were rigged, Scalise said: 

“You had wide changes after election night in the results. Look, whether you can prove fraud or not, it does undermine voter integrity in the vote.”

Anti-voting lawyer Cleta Mitchell said on social media that “The Cheating, pro-corrupt elections Democrats want every jurisdiction to be like California.”

Mitchell also went on former Trump senior advisor Steve Bannon’s podcast Tuesday and said she heard of people in California getting “15 ballots” sent to their homes.

Far-right podcaster Tim Pool spent the entirety of his show Monday ranting that California’s elections were rigged by Democrats. 

“Democrats Have STOLEN The Election In California, Spencer Pratt CHEATED OUT Of Win,” he wrote on X.