At noon today, California election officials reported that Democrat Xavier Becerra had doubled his margin over Republican Steve Hilton, and Hilton’s lead over Democrat Tom Steyer for the all-important second spot on the ballot had been cut by about 10%.
On Sunday, President Trump called the California primary “a rigged election.”
In a Meet the Press interview on NBC, Trump told Kristen Welker, “They’re cheating on the election,” then refused to offer any evidence.
He then told Welker: “Your elections are crooked, and you’re crooked, Meet the Press is crooked, and so is ABC and CBS and CNN – you’re one-sided, crooked neworks.”
Trump then said “I’ve had enough,” and stood up and walked out of the interview.
Later in the day, federal prosecutors accused California of blocking access to voter registration records as a legal battle over the maintenance of voter data continues in federal court.
Even though 2.4 million ballots remain to be counted, Hilton – who was endorsed by Trump – is likely to be on the November ballot, because of his 300,000-vote margin over Steyer.
Steyer on Sunday told his supporters: “We’re going to wait until every ballot is counted. We’re going to give democracy time to work. And we know we finished really strong.”
A 100,000-vote swing at the top of the ballot on June 5, the fourth day of vote counting, had bounced Becerra back into a slim 39,426-vote lead over Hilton. After another 600,000 mailed ballots were counted over the weekend, Becerra’s margin continued to grow, to nealry 88,000.
Becerra, who had trailed Hilton by more than 120,000 votes the day after the June 2 Primary Election, has 1,897,716 votes (27.1%) in the Secretary of State noon report today, compared to Hilton’s 1,810,110 votes (25.9%).
Elections officials estimated that approximately 2.4 million votes remain to be counted, as election workers processed the ballots. At that pace, the final unofficial count could be mostly wrapped up by the end of this week.
Steyer gained a little ground on the top two men, but is still trailing Hilton by more than 300,000 votes.
Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, in Los Angeles, announced on Friday he was conducting “multiple” investigations of vote-counting in Southern California – apparently based on Trump’s claims the day before, without evidence, of cheating by Democrats in the primaries.
Here are results reported this evening at noon on June 8:
- Xavier Becerra 1,897,716 27.1%
- Steve Hilton 1,810,110 25.9%
- Tom Steyer 1,504,358 21.8%
- Chad Bianco 741,329 10.6%
- Katie Porter 309,431 4.4%
- Matt Mahan 264,148 3.8%
Election officials reported that approximately 7 million votes had been processed, and estimated another 2.4 million remained to be processed. Today’s report showed that approximately 600,000 ballots had been processed since Friday
Each day that Hilton and Becerra continue at their current percentages, Steyer’s chances grow dimmer.
The state estimated that 9.4 million votes were cast. The 40% turnout is higher than most non-presidential year primary statewide elections, which have been around 35%.
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.
