00:00Is the election being stolen in California? You could be forgiven for wondering because of the
00:05slow pace at which ballots are being counted and the number of critical races that are yet to be
00:10decided. Take, for example, the race for Los Angeles mayor. Third place socialist city council
00:16member Nitya Raman keeps creeping closer and closer to second place finisher Spencer Pratt
00:21as more votes are counted. That has sent the prediction markets into a tailspin,
00:26and now many of them are saying that Raman has a better chance of beating incumbent mayor Karen
00:31Bass than Pratt does, but never put down to malevolence what could be explained by incompetence.
00:38California's vote counting system is truly terrible, and the reasons are many. One is that
00:44California allows ballots to be counted if they come in up to seven days after election day,
00:49as long as they're postmarked by election day. Another reason is that California sends out
00:55mail-in ballots to everybody, regardless of whether they ask for one or not, so you have a huge number
01:00of votes coming in by mail. And then California doesn't begin counting the absentee ballots until
01:05the election is over, whereas other states count them as they arrive. There are other reasons that
01:10California is very slow. California sends all of the ballots, particularly in LA County, to one
01:16counting area and doesn't count them in the voting stations, where they might be counted more quickly.
01:22There are lots of reforms on the table, lots of ways to fix this, but the short answer is, no,
01:27this doesn't really look like a steal. It would be too obvious. And keep in mind, the people who are
01:32being accused of trying to steal the election, the unions in particular, they want Spencer Pratt in a
01:37general election because they don't want to have to spend money on a left-on-left, blue-on-blue
01:42fight between Bass and Raman. Even though many of California's arcane rules are supposedly designed
01:48to make voting easier, by discouraging the public from trusting the process, they're actually
01:53discouraging people from voting. Unless there are reforms made like voter ID and other reforms,
01:58you'll see many people continue to question the accuracy and integrity of California's results.
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