This report will be updated daily. This update was posted at 7:30pm, June 3.
Republican Steve Hilton led in the first count of California votes for governor Tuesday, lost and regained the top position about an hour later and continued to widen his slim lead nearly 24 hours after polls closed.
California elections officials reported they had completed counting more than half the ballots and estimated another 4 million remained to be counted. The elections office was expected to provide a report on the remaining ballots on Thursday.
In the latest count, Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra maintained a solid, but not insurmountable margin over Democrat Tom Steyer for the top two spots. The top two finishers in the primary advance to a November runoff for governor.
Nearly 108,000 votes separated the top two candidates from each other, while Steyer was nearly 300,000 votes behind.
That is the gap that ballot watchers will focus on as the millions of ballots, most cast by mail, are counted over the next several days. Elections officials estimated that 55% of this year's ballots have been counted.
California’s top-two voting rule in effect since 2010 means there are in effect two winners in the primary. The top two candidates begin a five-month campaign this month.
These top candidates matched the up and down polls of the past two weeks. The most recent polls had showed support for Becerra surging past the others.
The $300 million primary campaign for governor was the most expensive in California history.
More than two-thirds of that total came from Steyer’s own deep pockets. He spent more than $216 million. Independent expenditure committees pitched in nearly $80 million, spread among the top six candidates.
Here are the total for leading candidates, as of 5:48pm, June 3:
- Steve Hilton, 1,417,689 27.6%
- Xavier Becerra, 1,310,710 25.5%
- Tom Steyer, 1,013,488 19.7%
- Chad Bianco, 579,839 11.3%
- Katie Porter, 236,720 4.6%
- Matt Mahan, 209,175 4.1%
Mahan and Porter both issued concession statements Tuesday evening.
“I want to congratulate my fellow candidates on a hard-fought campaign,” Mahan said. “While this campaign for governor ends tonight, our mission has only begun.”
“Running a race like this isn’t easy, and coming up short is hard, but democracy is worth doing hard things for,” said Porter. “Stay in the fight, stay in touch, and thank you for believing in me.”
The long list of 61 governor candidates facing voters included two who had dropped out after ballots were printed, Rep. Erik Swalwell and Betty Yee. The list included 36 Democrats and 12 Republicans; the remainder, like a big portion of the electorate, listed no party preference or minor party.
Vote totals “updated . . . daily”.
How many days and weeks will the counting continue in furtherance of California’s endemic election fraud?
That probably depends upon how many pre-filled-out Democratic “emergency ballots” have to be “found” in a closet, under a table, in someone’s car, etc. in the dead of night. (NB: no one ever finds emergency Republican ballots, do they?)
What a thrilling race to follow! Passing the halfway mark with Steve Hilton and Xavier Becerra widening their lead sets up an incredible showdown for November. It goes to show that even with Tom Steyer dropping a record-breaking $216 million of his own money into the race, big spending doesn’t automatically guarantee a top-two spot in California politics.
The only actual election fraud fully documented was the old orange pedo guy calling Georgia, asking them to ‘find’ 11k votes. That’s how the repubs do it (who are maga adjacent), that’s where the fraud is.
Nice try “SCC”
Look at the full conversation between President Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, regarding the results from Georgia in the 2020 Presidential election:
Earlier in the phone call, Trump had listed all the votes for Biden which he believed were fraudulent. For example, Trump said he believed there were over 200,000 votes with forged signatures, over 18,000 votes cast from a vacant address, almost 5,000 votes cast from out of state, 5,000 votes cast by deceased persons, etc.
When Trump said, “I want to find 11,780 votes,” all he was saying was, out of the many thousands he believed to be fraudulent, they only needed to prove it for 11,780 to win the state.
Whether Trump was correct that there were many thousands of fraudulent votes, that is a different discussion. But in this conversation with Brad Raffensperger, Trump was only talking about proving votes cast for Biden were fraudulent, not actually “finding” new votes for Trump.
Again, nice try.