“As one example of the insanity, California's recent election for mayor of LA and governor, was held on June 2nd, long time ago, but it was just completed a few days ago, on July 10th. Think of that, much more than one month. Took a month to count the votes. I wonder what they were doing.”

Prime-time address to the nation, East Room of the White House

July 10 was the certification date, not the day the counting finished. The Secretary of State's release of July 10, 2026 announces that she certified the results of the June 2 primary that day. Under a 2025 statute effective that year, counties were required to count and report most ballots by June 15, 2026, less than two weeks after the election, and the Secretary was required to certify by July 10. Los Angeles County, which runs the mayoral election he named, certified its own final results on June 26, having processed and counted 2,227,461 ballots.

The outcomes he said were unresolved were settled within a week. The Associated Press projected on June 5 that Xavier Becerra would advance in the governor's race, with about 66 percent of the expected vote counted, and called the second slot for Steve Hilton on June 9. It projected the second Los Angeles mayoral runoff slot for Nithya Raman on June 8. Some counting did continue, which is the claim's best defence: provisional, conditional-registration, signature-cure, duplicated, forwarded and some late-arriving mail ballots were exempt from the June 15 deadline and could be processed for up to 30 days after election day. The Secretary framed that pace as deliberate, saying accuracy comes before speed.