I couldn’t resist a pun for the title of this post. But the content is no joke. We all knew that the vote counting in California is very very slow, and that there’s a history of it turning towards the left as it goes on and if there’s a hint of someone on the right doing relatively well.

Does that mean there’s cheating? Maybe. There’s certainly a strong desire to win coupled with a less-than-convincing devotion to assuring that the will of the voters will be carried out no matter what the outcome. The mail-in ballots that can come in late, the drop-boxes, the rabid leftist partisanship, all combine to create at the very least a lack of trust in the system on the part of anyone on the right.

And so it was almost a foregone conclusion that this would be happening, and that it would seem suspicious whether it is or not:

… [T]he race for second place in the mayor’s contest is moving in a direction that should concern Spencer Pratt supporters, and anyone who thinks Los Angeles needs to move toward a more centrist, common-sense course.

Friday afternoon’s update added roughly 140,000 ballots countywide, with about 42.7% from within the city of Los Angeles.

Mayor Karen Bass remains firmly in first place with 34.98% of the vote. The real drama is the battle for the second runoff spot between Pratt and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman. …

Raman gained 23,115 votes in Friday’s update, compared to 10,711 for Pratt and 20,419 for Bass. In a single ballot drop, Raman netted 12,404 votes on Pratt. …

Put another way, she received more than twice as many votes as Pratt in this batch.

The upshot is that Pratt may fall to third place as more votes come in. And if he’s in third, he won’t be on the ballot. California’s voting system is designed to give voters a November choice of leftist and more leftist, rather than Democrat and Republican. But realistically, even if Pratt holds onto second place, at present he is only getting about a quarter or third of the vote compared to a combined Democrat/leftist vote that constitutes a definite majority.

Why anyone would vote for Bass or Raman is beyond me. I understand that Democrats will vote for Democrats. But these two have had their chances and have failed to help the city. If I lived in LA, I think that even if I were a Democrat I’d give Pratt a chance.