No, Spencer Pratt didn’t get zero votes in a 24,000-vote Los Angeles mayor ballot update

An Election Night data reporting lag in California fueled misinformation and false claims of voter fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral primary. 

Several X accounts shared similar claims in the days following the June 2 election, saying an update showed 24,000 new ballots reported in the mayoral primary, with former reality TV star Spencer Pratt receiving zero. 

Pratt, the Republican favorite in the nonpartisan mayoral primary for the heavily Democratic city, was polling as one of the top three candidates in the leadup to the election, along with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman. The top two candidates will advance to the November general election.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., shared the same claim, and Elon Musk amplified another version of it.  

The claim came as President Donald Trump repeatedly said, without evidence, that Democrats are committing election fraud in the California primary. 

Bill Essayli, who leads the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles that Trump has said is investigating alleged fraud, said the claim that Pratt received zero votes in an update is false. 

"We reviewed official county records. The claim is false. Each candidate received votes in every update," Essayli wrote on X. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office told the Los Angeles Times Pratt had received votes in each of the updates the office reported.

There was a claim circulating on social media about an election night ballot update at the Los Angeles Registrar of Voters where one candidate received zero votes.

We reviewed official county records. The claim is false. Each candidate received votes in every update.

My office…

— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) June 6, 2026

Automated data lag from media outlet muddled vote totals

The 24,000 ballot claim originated from numbers momentarily reported on news websites, not from official Los Angeles County reported results. On websites that draw from The Associated Press’s vote totals, an initial count showed a total of 308,878 counted votes, and a later update at about 8:35 p.m. Pacific Time displayed 333,712, a 24,834-vote difference. 

But the update did not include all results reported by the county at the time, which led to websites briefly displaying zero new votes for Pratt. 

The cause of the discrepancy was a lag in the AP’s vote count system that counted other candidates’ vote totals before counting Pratt’s, an AP spokesperson said. 

"Specifically, an electronic update from the Los Angeles County website pulled in votes for only one group of candidates, including Karen Bass and Nithya Raman," AP spokesperson Patrick Maks said in an email to PolitiFact. "Exactly one minute later, the electronic update picked up the votes for another group of candidates including Spencer Pratt."

Maks said those two updates included 21,870 votes for Pratt, 12,850 votes for Bass and 9,521 votes for Raman. 

A review of multiple data sources, including The Ballot Book and a GitHub project that scrapes each update from the government election website, shows the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office never reported a batch of results with zero votes for Pratt. 

That matches what was reported at the time by outlets like Decision Desk HQ and VoteHub. The Ballot Book, an independent California election data outlet, shows the same results in its log of the 8:35 p.m. update. 

No ballot batch with zero Pratt votes

The update in question at around 8:35 p.m. Pacific Time was the first one after an initial results announcement at 8:15 p.m. The initial results showed: 

• Karen Bass: 117,579

• Spencer Pratt: 86,323

• Nithya Raman: 61,949

The 8:35 p.m. update added 48,433 new votes to the count, with the top three candidates receiving votes as follows: 

• Karen Bass: 12,850

• Spencer Pratt: 21,870

• Nithya Raman: 9,521

After that update, the candidates’ new totals were: 

• Karen Bass: 130,429

• Spencer Pratt: 108,193

• Nithya Raman: 71,470

Screenshots used as evidence for the claim show 130,429 votes for Bass and 71,470 votes for Raman after the update, but show Pratt’s total at 86,323. That’s in line with the AP’s explanation of the data being updated out of sync. 

Our ruling

Social media posts said Pratt received zero votes out of 24,000 in a vote update during the California mayoral primary tally. 

The narrative originated from numbers that were momentarily reported on news websites, not from official Los Angeles County reported results. The media site reporting was based on a momentary data lag. Pratt received votes in each election update. 

We rate this statement False.