‘Tens of thousands’ of mail-in ballots for Spencer Pratt weren’t rejected in LA. Here’s the proof
Tens of thousands of mail-in ballots cast for Republican Spencer Pratt in the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral primary were rejected for “signature irregularities.”
According to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, which is in charge of running the county’s elections, about 12,700 mail-in ballots across the county (not just in the city of Los Angeles) required additional verification due to signature differences. Information was sent to affected voters explaining how they could ensure their vote was still counted. There was no evidence all of those ballots had been cast for Pratt, and that total would not have been enough for him to advance to the general election.
On June 11, 2026, posts on social media claimed “tens of thousands” of Los Angeles voters who cast mail-in ballots for mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt had their ballots rejected due to “signature irregularities.”
The posts implied that Democrats in California had rigged the election against Pratt, a Republican. Snopes readers wrote in asking us to investigate.
We found no evidence supporting the claim. The ballots with “signature irregularities” weren’t outright rejected, and the posts provided no evidence to support their claim, while the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, which administrates elections in the county, provided evidence to disprove it.
For these reasons, we’ve rated this claim false.
It’s also worth noting that the signature irregularities did not prove the election was stolen. That would require comparing the percentages of ballots with signature irregularities to the percentage of votes each candidate received across all ballots and looking for large differences. The posts making the claim did not do that.
Even if every ballot with a signature irregularity was cast for Pratt, he still wouldn’t have had enough votes to advance to the general election, according to LA County’s election numbers.
The background
On June 2, 2026, millions of Californians cast votes in the state’s 2026 primary elections, including for the mayor of Los Angeles. That race, which is officially nonpartisan, had three major candidates — incumbent Karen Bass and City Council member Nithya Raman, both Democrats, and Pratt, a former reality TV star and Republican.
California has a history of counting votes very slowly. It offers mail-in ballots to all registered voters, and according to the LA County elections website, more than 81% of voters cast their ballots by mail. Even more, California gives voters a lot of leniency when voting by mail: A mail-in ballot in the state is valid as long it is postmarked by Election Day and arrives at an election office within seven days of the election. This means that close races often play out over the course of a week or two instead of than in a single night.
Even still, sometimes a candidate has a clear lead on election night. Bass’ lead was substantial enough that The Associated Press declared the following day that she would move on to the general election in November.
The race to decide which candidate would be her opponent took longer to decide.
Though Pratt held a relatively significant lead over Raman in the first few days — he had an 8.1-point lead over Raman on election night, according to the AP — the mail-in results consistently favored Democrats. Raman crept closer with each new batch of votes reported, eventually overtaking Pratt on June 8. The Associated Press announced later that day that Raman would advance to the November election.
The results sparked an outcry on social media, with Pratt and U.S. President Donald Trump alleging that California Democrats had rigged the election. Pratt officially conceded the race on June 11.
The ballots weren’t rejected
In investigating the claim that tens of thousands of ballots had been rejected, we found that the supposed “signature irregularities” referenced by the posts did not mean such ballots were rejected outright.
Instead, those voters’ signatures on their mail-in ballots were different enough from the signatures in the voting record that Los Angeles County needed additional information to verify their ballots were not fraudulent. That’s why they were “challenged,” and forms were sent to the voters to request that additional information (as shown in the photograph spreading alongside the claim).
Because the ballots were challenged, not rejected, they still represented outstanding votes. There is no reason why those ballots wouldn’t be counted if voters provided the additional information requested and election officials confirmed the votes were legitimate.
Posts provided no evidence to support their claim
Additionally, the posts provided no evidence or hard data source that supported the idea that “tens of thousands” of ballots for Pratt were challenged over their signatures.
In an X post (archived), the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk said the claim was simply incorrect, and that there were only about 12,700 challenged ballots across the entire county — not just the city of Los Angeles.
“The number of ballots challenged based on signature matching is 9,713, and unsigned [ballots] 2,991,” it wrote.
Math doesn’t add up, anyway
Even if “tens of thousands” of ballots for Pratt were sent back to voters (again, LA County officials said that number was far too high), the claim assumes (without providing evidence) that no such thing happened with ballots cast for Raman and Bass.
Actually obtaining proof that the election had been rigged would involve comparing the number of signature-challenged ballots cast for each candidate, not just Pratt, to the number of total votes that candidate received. Further investigation would only be warranted if the percentage of challenged ballots cast for Pratt was significantly different than 25.5%, the share of the electorate who voted for him. But again, no proof existed.
Furthermore, even if every one of the challenged ballots was from the city of Los Angeles and was a vote for Pratt, he still wouldn’t have gotten enough votes to overtake Raman. According to county election results, Pratt received roughly 217,600 votes. Adding the rough total of 12,700 challenged votes would bring him to just over 230,000 votes total. Raman received more than 247,000 votes.
Snopes also compared Pratt’s tally with those from Republicans in past races to look for evidence that he had performed significantly worse, but the statistics showed that his 25.5% of votes was about average for a Republican in Los Angeles. Brian Dahle, the Republican candidate for governor in 2022, won 25.2% of the vote in Los Angeles (Page 13). Donald Trump earned 27.4% of the city’s vote in the 2024 presidential election (Page 15).
