Overview
- On election night, news sites that pulled AP totals displayed a roughly 24,000-vote jump while Pratt’s number briefly appeared unchanged, which users read as Pratt receiving zero of those ballots.
- The Associated Press says its system pulled totals for one group of candidates first and then updated Pratt’s group about a minute later, creating the out-of-sync display on public sites.
- Los Angeles County election logs and independent scrapers show the county never reported a batch with zero Pratt votes, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office confirmed Pratt received votes in every official update.
- Late-count mail ballots, which California allows to arrive days after Election Day, shifted results so that Nithya Raman overtook Pratt and will face Karen Bass in the November runoff.
- The episode highlights how brief data-feed glitches plus amplification by high-profile accounts can fuel false fraud narratives, a dynamic Pratt commented on by mocking counting delays on X.