Angelenos are stunned and furious after a dramatic late-vote surge by Nithya Raman upended what appeared to be Spencer Pratt’s clear path to the November runoff.
A flood of late-counted ballots has turned the race on its head, shrinking Pratt’s lead day after day and suddenly putting a Bass-Raman runoff on the table after Pratt appeared destined for November just days ago.
The latest ballot update on Saturday delivered another major boost for Raman.
New election results show Pratt’s lead over Raman shrinking to just 7,494 votes, down from more than 20,000 votes one day earlier.
Raman picked up 23,514 votes in the latest ballot count, more than double Pratt’s gain of 10,336 votes.
Her share of the vote climbed from 24.9% to 26.2%, while Pratt’s slipped from 28.2% to 27.3%.
The latest ballot batch dramatically tightened the race. Raman outpaced Pratt by 13,178 votes, shrinking his lead from more than 20,000 votes to just 7,494.
At 10:15 p.m. on election night, with roughly 48% of ballots counted, Bass led with 36.65% of the vote. Pratt appeared firmly headed for a runoff spot with 29.55%, while Raman trailed at just 20.79%, according to the Associated Press.
The stunning shift has left many voters scrambling to understand what happened.
When The Post told Pratt supporter Kenyatta Cole that Raman was rapidly closing in on Pratt’s runoff spot, he was initially at a loss for words.
“No way,” Cole responded. “I’m in shock. There’s just no way”
Cole, whose family spent three generations working in the city’s now-defunct As-Needed Haul Truck Program, said he viewed Pratt as a chance to change a city he believes has lost its way.
“We were looking for change for the city of Los Angeles,” Cole said. “Being born and raised here in Los Angeles, I’ve seen the change. It doesn’t look the same. It doesn’t smell the same.”
Cole told The Post he is frustrated by the latest numbers and the pace of counting under the new voting system.
“Something has to change. These ballots getting mailed out to everybody, that has to stop”
Nico Ruderman, a former state Senate candidate, Venice Neighborhood Council member said many voters are struggling to reconcile the latest results with what they saw on election night.
“It’s like being teased with hope and then having it ripped away,” Ruderman told The Post.
Ruderman said the prolonged count is creating anxiety regardless of who ultimately advances.
“People need to believe in their elections,” he said. “The perception of integrity is just as important as the integrity itself.”
He added that the pace of the count has become its own problem.
“An election should be a time that brings people together,” Ruderman said. “The slow count creates mistrust. It creates more division at a time when this country is really struggling to be one.”
Longtime political strategist Rick Taylor said the state’s slow ballot-counting process has exposed flaws in California’s voting system and sparked questions about whether reforms are needed.
Taylor also warned that prolonged vote counts are undermining public trust in elections.
“The whole idea of mail in ballots was to increase voter participation and make voting easier,” Taylor told The Post. “The question now is whether we’re getting enough of a turnout increase to justify a process that takes days or even weeks to finish.”
“At some point, you start eroding public trust when people are still waiting for outcomes days after an election,” Taylor said. “When vote counts drag on this long, voters begin to wonder what’s going on.”
The dramatic swing is also drawing attention in Pacific Palisades, where many residents remain frustrated with the pace of rebuilding nearly a year and a half after the devastating fire.
Sue Pascoe, founder of the local news site Circling the News, a Palisades fire survivor and Pratt supporter, said many residents had hoped the election would produce change after almost a year and a half of frustration with City Hall.
“Sixteen or seventeen months after the fire, nothing has changed,” Pascoe told The Post. “People still don’t have the money to rebuild. The permitting system is broken. Streets aren’t repaired.”
Pascoe said the size of Raman’s gains in recent ballot drops has left many voters with questions.
“To have that much of a shift in one vote drop just doesn’t seem logical,” she said. “If they could tell us where those ballots came from, I could understand it. But when the voting pattern suddenly changes and no explanation is given, it seems suspicious to a lot of us.”
As of Saturday, approximately 78% of ballots had been counted. Election officials are expected to continue releasing updated results daily as the remaining ballots are processed.
