Overview
- The June 2 mayoral primary left incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman as the top two finishers, with Raman overtaking reality star Spencer Pratt after late mail ballots were counted.
- News sites that use Associated Press feeds briefly displayed a roughly 24,000‑vote update that looked to add votes for Bass and Raman before showing Pratt’s totals, creating screenshots that falsely suggested Pratt received zero votes in that batch.
- The AP said the discrepancy was caused by its system pulling two groups of candidates at different moments; the two updates together added about 21,870 votes for Pratt, 12,850 for Bass and 9,521 for Raman.
- Federal and county officials, plus independent trackers such as The Ballot Book and GitHub scrapers, reviewed logs and confirmed the county never posted a batch showing zero votes for Pratt and called the social‑media claim false.
- The result underscores how California’s mail‑ballot timing and the state’s top‑two system can produce late swings, a dynamic that will shape Bass‑Raman campaigning and the uncertain direction of Pratt’s supporters in November.