California counts votes slowly. Trump falsely cries fraud.
6/9/202618 min
California counts votes very slowly, maybe slower than any other state. This is normal for California, but President Trump and some other Republican leaders are claiming, without evidence, that a delay in getting election results is evidence of fraud. We discuss why California is so slow to count votes and what Trump’s claims could mean for the November midterm elections.
This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, voting correspondent Miles Parks, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Ashley Lopez· Host0:30
[upbeat music] Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.
Miles Parks· Host0:38
I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.
Mara Liasson· Panelist0:39
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
Ashley Lopez· Host0:43
And we're recording this today at 12:36 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, June 9th, 2026. Today on the show, we're talking about voting in California's primary, which ended a week ago, but we still don't have full results in several key races, including the race for governor. At the time we're recording this podcast, Democrat Javier Becerra is advancing to the November election, but it's not clear yet whether he will be facing Republican Steve Hilton or Democrat Tom Steyer in November. And President Trump is claiming that these delayed election results are evidence of fraud. We should say there's no evidence of fraud, of course, but Miles, remind us why California is so slow to post election winners.
Miles Parks· Host1:24
Yeah, there's kinda a couple different parts to this, but one is just administratively. Uh, we should start with the fact that California