Steve Hilton Presses Gavin Newsom To Speed California Primary Vote Count

California’s June 2 primary vote count remained unfinished as of Friday, with voters still waiting on outcomes for the California governor and Los Angeles mayor races under the state’s top-two primary system.

In the governor’s race to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom, Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton held the top spot over Democratic former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, while billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer trailed.

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The delay also fed criticism from President Trump, who questioned California’s election process and accused the state of “rigging” results to win primary elections.

ABC7 Bay Area reported that California law allows ballots to be counted if they arrive up to a week after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by then, and that election officials prioritize accuracy over speed.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton called for faster ballot counting, appearing at a rally Friday morning outside the San Mateo County Elections Office in San Mateo and urging changes to speed up results.

Hilton proposed additional resources to accelerate the counting process, including an “Emergency Election Support Corps,” and said, "It involves surging workers to these election centers so you don't just have empty places, nothing happening,".

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Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office pushed back, saying in a statement, "It's concerning that a candidate for Governor doesn't know the Governor has nothing to do with counting ballots."

In Los Angeles, the Justice Department sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing at a ballot processing center, as Donald Trump continued to make baseless claims that California Democrats were “rigging” the results to win primary elections.

The Guardian reported that the Justice Department sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles, and it quoted a county registrar-recorder spokesperson saying, "our office was notified late yesterday that the US Attorney’s Office would send an Assistant US Attorney to the Ballot Processing Center".

The same report said California counties must finish counting ballots by 15 June, while mail-in ballots postmarked by election day and received by 9 June could be processed beyond the deadline.

Across the state, the Guardian cited the California secretary of state’s office estimating there were still 3,606,128 ballots that need to be processed and counted, as Shirley Weber said, "California’s county elections officials are hard at work counting the millions of ballots cast by California voters".

USA TODAY added that Bill Essayli announced his office would conduct multiple investigations into potential election fraud in Los Angeles, and it quoted him saying he would work with the FBI to "conduct a comprehensive audit of California’s voter rolls."