President Trump and his associates have escalated allegations of election fraud in California, claiming the state's vote-counting process is 'rigged.'
The allegations come after a contentious interview with NBC's Meet the Press, where Trump questioned the state's drawn-out voting process, saying it was 'suspicious.'
Trump and others, including Elon Musk and House Speaker Mike Johnson, have made claims of election impropriety, despite a lack of evidence.
California's laborious vote-counting process, which verifies and counts every ballot postmarked by Election Day and arrives within a week after, gives Trump and his supporters plenty of time to make such claims.
Election officials in California's 58 counties provide interim counts as they verify and tally ballots, a phenomenon known as the 'red mirage' or the 'blue shift.'
The Associated Press said on Monday evening that Nithya Raman will advance to the November runoff against Karen Bass.
Others in Trump's orbit making fraud allegations include Elon Musk, who has made more than a dozen posts on his platform X questioning the California process and mail-in voting more generally.
The president, who continues to claim without evidence that he didn't lose the 2020 election to Joe Biden, is already drawing a direct line between this year's political contests and his stolen-election claims from six years ago.
