A 100,000-vote swing at the top of the ballot on the fourth day of vote counting in the California governor’s race bounced Democrat Xavier Becerra back into a slim lead over Republican Steve Hilton.

Becerra, who had trailed Hilton by more than 120,000 votes the day after the June 2 Primary Election, recorded 1,729,786 votes in this evening’s Secretary of State report, more than 38,000 votes ahead of Hilton’s 1,691,360 votes.

Elections officials estimated tonight that approximately 3 million votes remain to be counted, as election workers processed the ballots. They reported that 99% of the count were mail ballots postmarked or dropped off at polling places across the state.

Regardless whether Becerra or Hilton is tagged as the primary election victor, both are more certain than ever to be opponents in November.

Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer slipped even further behind the top two men, trailing Hilton by more than 338,000 votes in the June 5 report.

The ballot count is barely two-thirds complete, but that didn’t stop President Trump from jumping in to stir controversy and challenge the outcome.

Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, in Los Angeles, announced today that his office is conducting “multiple” investigations of vote-counting in Southern California – apparently based on Trump’s claims, without evidence, of cheating in the primaries.

“We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent,” Essayli, a Trump appointee, wrote on X.

Thursday evening, when Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Steve Hilton was still leading, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Watch California, everybody! Our Election process is as bad, or worse, than any Third World Country. The biggest difference is, they count their Votes much faster — They don’t wait seven days to tell you who won, rigging the Election during each and every one of them. Americans are ashamed of what is happening!”

Essayli said his office had “multiple election fraud investigations underway” but did not offer any specifics.

Essayli claimed, without examples, that California’s election system was rife with “serious structural vulnerabilities,” criticizing the state’s policy of allowing mail-in voting and not requiring photo IDs at the polls.

Essayli also said his office was “working closely” with Harmeet Dhillon, the U.S. assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, to audit the state’s voter rolls to “verify that only eligible U.S. citizens” are registered.

The Secretary of State reported on election day that more than 23 million Californians had registered to vote in the primary.

Here are results reported this evening at 6pm:

• Xavier Becerra 26.8% 1,729,786 (+38,426)
• Steve Hilton 26.3% 1,691,360 (+338,058)
• Tom Steyer 21.1% 1,353,302
• Chad Bianco 10.7% 690,508
• Katie Porter 4.5% 289,139
• Matt Mahan 3.9% 247,815

Election officials reported that approximately 6.3 million votes had been processed, and estimated another 3 million remained to be processed. Today’s reports showed that approximately 600,000 ballots were processed today.

To move past Becerra, Steyer would need to nearly double his current total, grabbing 40% of the remaining ballots. Each day that Hilton and Becerra continue at their current percentages, Steyer’s chances grow dimmer.

In Thursday’s report, election officials said Steyer trailed Becerra by more than 330,000 votes, and Hilton led Becerra by more than 63,000 votes.

As of late Thursday, Steyer remained defiant and optimistic. His campaign issued a statement that “we’re going to give democracy time to work.”

The state estimated that 9.3 million votes were cast. The 40% turnout is higher than most non-presidential year primary statewide elections, which have been around 35%.

The turnout represents a significant number of last-minute voters: Just 14% of mail ballots had been received on or before Election Day.

In California, it typically takes weeks for counties to process and count all of the ballots. By law, elections officials have approximately one month to complete their extensive tallying, auditing, and certification work (known as the official canvass).

Every active, registered voter was sent a vote-by-mail ballot. Vote-by-mail ballots postmarked on or before Election Day and received by the county elections official no later than seven days after the election will be processed and can be counted. In processing vote-by-mail ballots, elections officials must confirm each voter's registration status, verify each voter's signature on the vote-by-mail envelope, and ensure each person did not vote elsewhere in the same election before the ballot can be counted, according to the Secretary of State’s Election Division.

Also, other ballots that are processed after Election Day include provisional ballots (processed similar to vote-by-mail ballots), conditional voter registration provisional ballots and ballots that are damaged or cannot be machine-read and must be remade by elections officials.

State law requires county elections officials to report final official results to the Secretary of State by July 3. The Secretary of State has until July 10 to certify the results of the election.

 

Three decades of journalism experience, as a writer and editor with Gannett, Knight-Ridder and Lee newspapers, as a business journal editor and publisher and as a weekly newspaper editor in Scotts Valley and Gilroy; with the Weeklys group since 2017. Recipient of several first-place writing and editing awards, California News Publishers Association.