Feds pursuing 'multiple' election fraud investigations, top prosecutor says

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4. MaddowBlog-Republicans' California election conspiracy theories suffer from one fatal flaw

If nefarious Democratic schemers existed and were secretly orchestrating the results, these are not the outcomes they would have picked.

Aside from the obvious, Republican conspiracy theories about the California elections seem to suffer from one fatal flaw:

If nefarious Democratic schemers existed and were secretly orchestrating the results from the shadows, they wouldn’t have picked these outcomes.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-06-09T21:16:15.573Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/republicans-california-election-conspiracy-theories-suffer-from-one-fatal-flaw

This week, the answer came into focus. MS NOW reported:

Los Angeles Council member Nithya Raman will advance to the November general election in the mayoral race to face the incumbent, Karen Bass, after overtaking ex-reality TV star Spencer Pratt in the primary, The Associated Press projects.

Raman has steadily trended upward in the vote count since Election Day, and she overtook Pratt on Sunday. Monday’s vote update gives Raman a cushion of more than 20,000 votes, making her position in the top two safe, with an estimated 93% of the vote counted.

.....In recent days, a great many GOP leaders, including Donald Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill, have invested an enormous amount of time and energy trying to convince the public the state’s elections process is “rigged” by nefarious Democratic schemers who’ve secretly orchestrated the results to ensure their preferred outcome.

When pressed for evidence, GOP officials tend to embarrass themselves, but that’s not the only — or even the central — problem. On the contrary, the Republican conspiracy theory suffers from an obvious fatal flaw: If nefarious Democratic schemers existed and were secretly orchestrating the results, they wouldn’t have picked these outcomes.

In Los Angeles’ mayoral race, it’s no secret that the Democratic incumbent, running in a city with an enormous progressive voter base, welcomed the opportunity to run against a conservative television personality with an embarrassingly thin professional resume. Instead, Bass will face Raman, a Harvard- and MIT-educated City Council member who’s already demonstrated an ability to win local elections.

If powerful Democratic operatives were pulling the strings from the shadows, they would’ve gladly pitted Bass against Pratt, if only to watch him lose in November.

Similarly, Democrats would’ve loved to see two Democratic candidates emerge from the state’s gubernatorial primary, thus ensuring party control. Instead, it appears increasingly likely that a GOP candidate backed by the Republican president will advance to the general election — which, again, is not the outcome these ostensible powerful Democratic operatives pulling the strings from the shadows would’ve deliberately orchestrated.