Fox News Anchor Catches Democrats Red-Handed With Ballot Scheme That Left Him Fuming
California held its statewide primaries, and the votes still aren’t counted.
Something about that picture is starting to bother people who pay close attention.
And Fox News anchor Joey Jones went on air and said exactly what millions of Americans are already thinking about what’s happening out there.
Joey Jones Calls It What It Is
The Golden State’s primary elections wrapped up, but the results of several key races remain up in the air. Who advances in the gubernatorial contest, who moves forward in the Los Angeles mayoral race — none of it is settled yet. And by California law, counties have up to 30 days after an election to process valid ballots, including late-arriving mail ballots.
Thirty days. To count votes.
On Fox News’ The Big Weekend Show, co-host Tomi Lahren said she wasn’t ready to call the process “improper or sketchy,” even while acknowledging it “opens up” room for people to ask hard questions about why it takes so long. Her co-host didn’t share her hesitation.
“Let me say it for you: It is sketchy,” Jones said flatly.
And he didn’t stop there.
“It’s sketchy because they’re not doing it because it makes them lose elections, they’re not doing it because it hurts Democrats in elections,” Jones said.
That’s not a complicated argument. It’s a pretty simple one, actually. If the process consistently produced results that hurt the party running the state, California would have changed it a long time ago.
The Numbers That Raised Eyebrows
Jones pointed to a specific data point that caught his attention: a batch of 10,000 votes that dropped all at once and went entirely to Nithya Raman, the democratic socialist competing against Republican-aligned Spencer Pratt and incumbent Democrat Karen Bass for the Los Angeles mayor’s seat.
“You should ask questions, you should wonder. Really? That’s how it works?” Jones said.
Pratt had been leading Raman since election night, but his margin has shrunk considerably as more ballots roll in. With 71% of votes counted, Pratt held a 28.2% to 24.9% edge over Raman. Whether that lead survives the remaining count is anyone’s guess.
Jones also took aim at California’s ballot “curing” process. CBS News has described ballot curing as a procedure that “allows voters to correct, or cure, their ballots if they were rejected by both the machine and an election administrator.” It adds still more time to a count that already stretches for weeks. Jones’ take on it was blunt: “You think they are doing that to lose? No, they’re not.”
And there’s a structural reason why that matters. As Jones put it, the extended counting window is “a process even that they admit only helps the Democrats because Republicans are more apt to turn in their ballots early, do early voting, or vote on election day.”
Republicans vote early. Democrats vote late. The counting window keeps going until the late ballots are all in. That’s not a coincidence — it’s the architecture of the system.
This Isn’t Happening in a Vacuum
Election law expert Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, broke down the four structural factors driving California’s counting delays: mass mail voting, a seven-day post-Election Day ballot receipt window, a 22-day cure period for signature issues, and high volumes of provisional ballots that each require individual review. Von Spakovsky told Fox News Digital that California is “almost entirely a mail election now,” and that the sheer volume of mail ballots forces officials to spend far more time verifying and processing before they can count anything.
Meanwhile, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office have opened multiple election fraud investigations in California. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced the probes, stating that “protecting the integrity of California’s elections is a top priority for my office” and pointing to what he called “serious structural vulnerabilities” in the state’s universal vote-by-mail system.
Democrats pushed back hard. Former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, who advanced to the November general election in the governor’s race, said people raising concerns about the timeline are working “to undermine confidence in our elections.” Democrat gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer posted on X, “We count every ballot. Thank you for your patience as we give democracy time to work.”
But that framing sidesteps the actual concern. Nobody is saying don’t count ballots. The question is why the system is built the way it is, who benefits from it being built that way, and whether California would ever reform it if the answer to that second question were different.
The Bigger Picture Here Is Hard to Ignore
California elections have taken between 30 and 38 days to certify in recent years. The 2024 election wasn’t certified until 41 days after Election Day. The 2022 election took a similar amount of time. This isn’t some new emergency — it’s a feature of how the state runs its elections, baked in year after year while Democrats maintain an iron grip on state government.
President Donald Trump has backed Republican Steve Hilton in the governor’s race. Hilton held a 26.4% to 21% edge over Steyer with an estimated 68% of votes counted, but with California’s counting timeline, that lead could look very different before the final tally is certified in July.
And that’s precisely the point Jones was making. It’s not that any single ballot batch proves wrongdoing. It’s that the entire structure of California’s election system — the mail-ballot dominance, the extended receipt window, the curing process, the weeks-long certification timeline — operates in a way that consistently advantages one party. The party that also happens to control every lever of state government.
At some point, “trust the process” stops being a satisfying answer when the process itself keeps producing the same winners.
Jones wasn’t wrong to call it sketchy. Millions of Americans watching California’s returns trickle in over days and weeks are asking the same question he asked on air: really, that’s how it works?
The SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, represents exactly the kind of commonsense reform that could bring accountability to systems like California’s. Democrats have fought it tooth and nail — which tells you something about who benefits from the status quo.
California isn’t just slow. It’s a preview of what election administration looks like when one party controls the rules, the referees, and the outcome for long enough that nobody inside the system even bothers to pretend otherwise anymore.
Sources: Mediaite; Fox News Digital; FOX 11 Los Angeles