LA Mayor’s Race Proves Elections Need to Be Retrofitted

The 1994 Northridge Earthquake moved Los Angeles about 8.7 inches north toward San Francisco. The 2026 Democrats moved Los Angeles all the way into the third world.

First came the squalor, the homelessness, and the smash-and-grab lawlessness, and now, straight out of the banana republic playbook, come election shenanigans so blatant it makes North Korean elections look as clean as a Sunday sermon.

Like Northridge, the news Monday that democratic socialist Nithya Raman had somehow overtaken upstart citizen Spencer Pratt to officially secure a spot in the November L.A. mayor runoff came and went in a matter of seconds. But the wreckage left in its wake will haunt the city for years to come.

A Disaster Movie, Not a Feel-Good Flick

What happened to Pratt, what happened to democracy, feels a lot like that quake did. Angelenos are used to earthquakes, just like they’ve gotten used to elections in California hardly being worth the effort.

“Just had a 5.6 earthquake? Anything break? Great. At least it won’t ruin the weekend.”

“My candidate’s up by 7% on election night? Great. That lead will be gone by the weekend.”

But the Northridge quake felt different. Northridge was so nasty, so widespread, so clear a statement that “I can smash your pitiful freeways and there’s nothing you can do about it,” it rattled the nerves even of seasoned earthquake veterans.

Here, the tremor was just as strong: “I will smash your election dreams, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Pratt was the archetypal Hollywood underdog … an average citizen who suffered at the hands of an incompetent government and was fed up enough to try and do something about it.

How can a town that made its fortune on tales of the underdog making good—from the Little Tramp to Mr. Smith, from Rudy to Rocky—not have this election shake their bones?

“Sorry, Rocky. We know Creed didn’t get off the canvas by the ten-count. But we’re gonna give him all the extra time he needs to get up and knock ya’ out.”

You can tell yourself LA will just get back to normal, just like the building inspectors said it was safe to return to our office building just blocks from the Northridge epicenter.

A primal, instinctive sense screams the whole thing could collapse at any moment.

The Solution

Can Los Angeles be saved?

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli says “multiple election fraud investigations are underway in coordination with @FBILosAngeles. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent.”

But convictions, let alone anything that would overturn the results, are about as likely as Karen Bass getting invited to Pratt’s next house party.

For one thing, officials will fight tooth and nail any efforts to verify what really went on. (See Fulton County, Georgia; Maricopa County, Arizona.)

Second, as Victor Davis Hanson says, the system is operating exactly as it was designed. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts put it simply:

“Universal mail-in ballots, no ID verification, no meaningful voter eligibility verification, and no way to verify whether a ballot was filled out by Election Day. What could go wrong?”

India counted its 640 million votes in one day in 2024. California stretches out the counting like it’s the last cup of water from the Colorado River.

California needs what Los Angeles got after the Northridge quake: a massive retrofit. Retrofitting is when additional support is added to existing buildings and structures to make them more earthquake-resistant.

The same thing needs to happen to elections. Retrofit the democratic process so efforts to grab elections and shake them until enough “winning” ballots fall out will no longer send elections crumbling.

How could elections in L.A. be retrofitted?

• Ban universal mail-in ballots. Currently they’re spread over L.A. like smog. Rudolf Valentino likely got a ballot.
• Voter ID. As the Daily Signal’s Drew Allen noted, voting for our leaders should at least require as much security and verification as voting for the Academy Awards. Heck, put PricewaterhouseCoopers in charge of the elections.
• Real signature verification. Currently, the only time they verify signatures is if it’s for a petition or candidate Democrats don’t like. Those petitions are pawed over like photos of the new cast of “Baywatch.” Otherwise, they’re ignored like Disney’s remake of “Snow White.”
• Return Election Day to Election Day. Want more voter participation? Turn In-N-Out restaurants into polling stations.

We could go on and on. But will it happen? Sure. When Gavin Newsom’s train to nowhere runs from L.A. to Mars. Democrats have zero motive to fix the system. Republicans have zero power in the legislature or courts to fix it.

A Shockwave That Reaches Washington

Democracy’s best hope is the shockwave from this election quake will travel all the way across the country to Washington. Knock sleeping Republican senators from their Swamp Slumber to finally get the SAVE America Act passed … even if it means gutting the Senate filibuster.

Don’t they get just how unpopular Democrats are with real voters? The Democrats had to cheat in Los Angeles. LOS ANGELES! That’s like having to cheat at solitaire.

How many elections nationwide would Republicans have actually won in places without LA’s 3-to-1 registration ratio but for the systems being similarly gamed or rigged? This nation is likely as red as an Irishman who sleeps for a week on Venice Beach.

Should more election destruction come to democracy in California and elsewhere around the nation, the fault line won’t run through the San Fernando Valley. It’ll run through the U.S. Senate chamber.

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