More than a week after Los Angeles voters went to the polls, the city's mayoral race remains uncalled, and the lead has flipped. City Council member Nithya Raman, a Democrat, overtook Republican reality television star Spencer Pratt in the latest Associated Press vote tally, pulling ahead by more than 3,000 votes in a margin of roughly 0.4 percentage points.

Pratt had led earlier in the day. Then fresh batches of counted ballots shifted the race. The Associated Press has not called a second candidate to advance to the November runoff, leaving incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, who already secured her spot, waiting to learn who she will face.

The drawn-out count has become a national flashpoint. The Republican National Committee launched a website tracker that counts the seconds since polls closed, and the RNC's message was blunt. As Fox News reported, the tracker declared: "The California primary ended on June 2, 2026; yet California is still counting ballots." It added: "The state's election system is a complete joke. The RNC is tracking every hour it takes California to finish the count."

How California's count drags on

The mechanics are straightforward, and that is part of the problem. Every active registered voter in California receives a mail ballot. Ballots postmarked by Election Day may arrive up to seven days later, meaning Los Angeles County accepted ballots through June 9. Election workers must then verify signatures and process every late-arriving envelope before tabulating.

County officials face a deadline of July 2 to complete final official results. The California secretary of state will certify those results by July 10. That means a full month will pass between the June 2 primary and the state's final stamp on the outcome.

Election officials and voting experts have said the extended timeline is largely driven by the state's universal mail ballot rules, the signature verification process, and the sheer volume of late-arriving ballots. That explanation has done little to quiet critics who see a system designed to frustrate transparency and erode public confidence.

McCarthy points the finger at Newsom

McCarthy, speaking on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," laid the blame squarely on Governor Gavin Newsom. His argument was specific: California's elections did not always move this slowly, and the change tracks to policy decisions Newsom made after taking office.

"When Gavin Newsom was elected governor of California, you knew who was elected in a day to two days. Now it takes more than weeks, almost a month."

McCarthy pressed the point further, framing the delay as a direct consequence of deliberate rule changes.

"Gavin changed a number of election laws in which you want to see is what did he do and why did he cause it?"

He did not identify the specific statutes. But the broader complaint, that California's election infrastructure has become uniquely slow among large states, is one that resonates well beyond Republican circles. Voters across the political spectrum tend to expect results within days, not weeks. When a state the size of California cannot deliver them, the question McCarthy posed lands with force: "Why did we get here?"

The race itself

Los Angeles runs a nonpartisan mayoral primary. If no candidate wins a majority, the top two vote-getters advance to a November runoff. Bass, the incumbent Democrat, cleared that threshold and secured her place. The fight now is for the second slot.

Raman, a sitting city council member, and Pratt, best known for reality television, have traded the lead as ballots trickle in. The margin, roughly 3,000 votes and four-tenths of a percentage point, is thin enough that additional batches could shift the race again before the count is finalized.

Pratt and other Republicans have decried the ongoing ballot count. The frustration is not abstract. Every day the race remains uncalled is another day the eventual runoff challenger cannot fully organize, fundraise, or draw clear contrasts with Bass. The delay benefits the incumbent by default.

A system built for delay

California's defenders argue the state is simply processing a massive volume of legitimate ballots under rules designed to maximize voter participation. That framing treats slowness as a feature, not a bug.

But consider the timeline. The primary was June 2. Mail ballots could arrive through June 9. The county has until July 2 to finish counting. The state has until July 10 to certify. That is five full weeks from Election Day to certification, for a primary, not a recount, not a contested audit.

The RNC's tracker, whatever one thinks of its tone, highlights a real structural question. Other large states manage to count mail ballots and report results far more quickly. Florida, with a comparable population, routinely delivers nearly complete results on election night. The difference is not geography or population size. It is policy.

California chose to mail ballots to every active registered voter. California chose to accept ballots arriving up to a week after Election Day. California chose a verification and processing timeline that stretches weeks. Each choice, individually, has a rationale. Stacked together, they produce a system where voters cast ballots in June and wait until mid-July for a certified answer.

What remains unanswered

Several questions hang over the race. The AP has not called a second candidate to advance. The exact vote totals for Raman, Pratt, Bass, and the full field of candidates have not been detailed. Whether additional ballot batches will narrow or widen Raman's slim lead is unknown.

And the broader political question McCarthy raised, which specific election law changes under Newsom produced this drawn-out process, remains unaddressed by the governor's office in the available reporting.

What is clear is that Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the country, held a mayoral primary more than a week ago and still cannot say who will face the incumbent in November. The RNC is counting the seconds. Voters, presumably, are counting their patience.

The cost of slow certainty

Defenders of California's system will say accuracy matters more than speed. Fair enough. But accuracy and speed are not opposites in a well-designed election system. They are both obligations. Other states meet both. California has decided, through a series of deliberate policy choices, that it will meet one and shrug at the other.

The result is a mayoral race in the nation's second-largest city where the lead flips mid-count, the AP declines to call a winner, and the final certification date is more than five weeks after voters showed up. That is not a system built to inspire confidence. It is a system built to test it.

When it takes longer to count the ballots than it took to campaign for them, the problem is not the voters. It is the rules.