Elections in the city of Los Angeles include mayor, City Council, three ballot measures and Los Angeles Unified School District board seats and, if you live in the city, you’ve maybe seen an ad about them.
The high-profile competition between incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, City Councilmember Nithya Raman and conservative reality star Spencer Pratt has been tumultuous. And that is to say nothing of Rae Huang, Adam Miller and the nine others contenders.
A candidate can win by getting a majority of the vote. If no one receives 50% + 1 vote, the top two advance to the November election.
twitter
facebook
envelope
angle-double-right
angle-down
angle-up
long-arrow-right
Jump to:
Mayor
The Associated Press, which surveys the numbers posted by local election officials and projects the winner using vote returns and other data, will call a winner (or a runoff) for L.A. mayor.
On the ballot this year is an entirely new congressional map.
Redrawn with the passage of Proposition 50, the new districts favor Democrats in November. But those gains aren’t guaranteed. Candidates have to make it through California’s primary, where the top two vote-getters move on to the general election regardless of party preference.
While many districts shifted only slightly, some Republican districts were split, some Democrat districts were strengthened, and in one district lines were redrawn with no overlap at all with their 2024 boundary.
Several seats are competitive — either with a tight race between Republicans or because the seat is expected to flip from red to blue. With redistricting, only four seats are considered solidly Republican, according to the Cook Political Report, down from the nine GOP seats won in 2024.
The 1st Congressional District — which was redrawn farther south to cover portions of Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, and Yuba counties — is one to likely flip.
Rep. Ken Calvert’s 41st District in the Inland Empire was eliminated and completely redrawn in Los Angeles County. Calvert is now challenging Republican incumbent Young Kim in the 40th District. Both are marked as incumbents in the results below.
In its new position, the 41st District was carved, in part, out of the previous 38th District. The current representative for the 38th District, Democrat Linda Sánchez, is running in the 41st District and is marked as an incumbent.
Several seats, such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 11th District, are competitive between candidates from differing wings of the Democratic party. While in District 22, Democrats are competing to challenge Republican Rep. David Valadao in a redrawn, Latino-majority swing district.
Also on this page are noncompetitive local districts that may still be of interest to Times’ readers in Southern California.
It’s election day in California’s 2026 primary, and you’re headed to the polls — until you realize you’re not sure you’re registered, or fear you might not make it to the vote center on time.
Here are some common election day concerns and challenges and how to end your Tuesday with an “I voted” sticker.
Eligible citizens who need to register or re-register to vote within 14 days of an election can complete this process and vote at county elections offices, polling places or vote centers. To register you’ll need to provide a driver’s license, a state identification number or the last four digits of your Social Security number.
A complete list of county election office addresses can be found here.
Your submitted ballot will be processed and counted once the county elections office has completed the voter registration verification process.
If you’re unsure about your voter status, you can find your record here by providing some personal information including your date of birth and driver’s license number.
I don’t know where my polling place is
You can find your nearest polling place on the California secretary of state’s website here.
You can also use Los Angeles County’s voter center locator on the registrar-recorder/county clerk website here.
On election day, voting centers are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. across the state.
I can’t submit my mail-in ballot myself
You can have someone else submit your ballot.
Anyone can drop off your mailed ballot as long as you authorize them to do so and they do not get paid on a per-ballot basis, according to the secretary of state.
You and the person you’ve authorized to submit your mailed ballot must fill and sign the outside of the ballot envelope.
I forgot my check-in code for in-person voting
Los Angeles County election officials say you can check in at a vote center by scanning your “quick check-in code” — a number that verifies your voter registration.
Your code can be found on your mailed sample ballot and vote center postcard. Take either of those hard copies to the vote center.
If you forgot the hard copies, you can retrieve the code by verifying your voter registration here. You’ll need to input your last name, birth date, the house number of your residential address and ZIP Code. For assistance call, (800) 815-2666, Option 2.
I want to drop my ballot in a box but fear it’s too late
There are three ways you can submit your mailed ballot on election day:
You can put it in a ballot drop box. The cutoff time for doing so is 8 p.m., which is also when the polls close on election day.
Drop it off at a vote center, where the deadline is the same.
Drop it off at a United States post office. Be sure to get a hand-stamped postmark from a postal employee. Mailed ballots must be postmarked on election day and received no later than seven days after election day.
I think I forgot to sign by mailed ballot envelope
If you failed to sign your vote-by-mail ballot return envelope, your vote will still count.
Your county elections official will notify you by mail, phone or email, according to the secretary of state. You can also be notified by way of the “Where’s My Ballot?” tracking tool if you have signed up for automatic notifications that will ping you if there are issues with your ballot.
Your county elections office will provide you with a form to fill out and return completed.
The form will be given to you two days prior to the day your county certifies the election, so be sure to fill it out and return it to your county elections office right away.
I’m going to be late getting to the polls; can I still vote?
In California, any voter who is in line at 8 p.m. when the polls are scheduled to close is allowed to vote, according to the secretary of state.
If there is a line when the polls close, a poll worker stands at the back of the line to let people who arrive after 8 p.m. know that the polls have closed.
Any voter who arrives after the polls have closed may not be allowed to vote, even if voters who were in line to vote before the polls closed are in the process of voting.
California voters are deeply divided over the trustworthiness of state elections heading into Tuesday’s primary, with most Democrats but less than half of Republicans expressing confidence in the electoral process, according to a new poll.
The polarized view follows a years-long campaign by President Trump and his Republican allies to question the legitimacy of American elections, especially in California and other blue states. It also follows robust efforts from liberal leaders, elections officials and voting rights experts to denounce Trump’s claims as baseless.
Overall, registered voters in the state — which skews heavily Democratic — expressed confidence in local election officials by a 2-to-1 margin, with 65% expressing confidence and 31% expressing a lack of confidence, according to the poll released Tuesday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.
However, those figures shift dramatically when sorted by political party, and even more when parsed by partisan leaning.
For example, 79% of Democratic voters expressed confidence in local officials running a secure and fair election, compared to 62% of independent voters and 42% of Republican voters, the poll found.
While 82% of voters who identified as strongly liberal expressed confidence, just 38% of voters who identified as strongly conservative did so.
A volunteer assists Melani Hurwitz at a polling location Monday at the Cal State Long Beach Walter Pyramid.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s clearly a partisan issue, and it is being promoted by the president and others who are his followers,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of Berkeley IGS polls. “Strong conservatives and the Republicans are the least confident, and a lot of them are saying [they are] not at all confident. That’s a pretty extreme statement.”
Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, said he expected Republican confidence to be even lower given Trump’s decade of undermining trust in elections, especially in liberal, diverse states such as California. But he said neither Trump’s narrative nor public sentiment about election security — which generally shows voters are more confident “when their side wins” — reflects reality, which is that “our elections are administered well.”
“There’s very little evidence of manipulation or of fraud or even of incompetence,” Hasen said. “Anyone who looks objectively would see that there are numerous safeguards to ensure we have free and fair elections in California.”
Trump has long contended without evidence that voter fraud is pervasive among undocumented immigrants and in states, such as California, that use mail ballots, and blamed his 2020 loss to Joe Biden on such fraud despite experts rejecting the claim and Trump’s own allies and lawyers being unable to prove it.
A voter casts their vote inside the Westchester Family YMCA Annex on Monday.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has tried to implement strict new requirements for voter ID and proof of citizenship and to limit or bar mail-in voting, and called for greater federal or Republican Party control over state-run elections. In February, he said that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting” in “at least 15 places” where they lose.
Democratic leaders, elections experts and voting rights advocates have all pushed back. They’ve backed their assurances that the state’s elections are safe with lawsuits to block Trump’s efforts to assert federal control. They also warn that his administration may try to intervene anyway, including by sending federal immigration agents to polling locations or intercepting or invalidating mailed ballots.
Last week Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill barring federal agents and other law enforcement from interfering with local and state elections officials or confiscating ballots, voter rolls or voting machines without a warrant. Newsom said California voters were experiencing “legitimate anxiety” over election integrity given the threats from the Trump administration and the recent actions of Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — a MAGA-backed Republican candidate for governor who recently seized hundreds of thousands of ballots as part of what he said was an investigation into potential fraud in last year’s election.
An election worker collects extracted vote by mail ballots to be tallied at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Ballot Processing Center in City of Industry.
(Gary Coronado / For The Times)
Newsom said he expects Trump to interfere with the upcoming election as well because “every single thing that Donald Trump is saying only suggests that he will do more, not less, to intimidate and to impact the outcome of this election,” but that the state stands ready to respond.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta last week said that his office is preparing for “all different types of scenarios” involving federal interference, from ballots being seized to immigration agents showing up at polling locations.
“We are currently monitoring any potential risks or threats, and we’re ready for any possibility,” he said.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) last week blasted the U.S. Postal Service for issuing a proposed rule to implement Trump’s mail ballot changes, despite the ongoing litigation. In April, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) helped convene a pair of “shadow hearings” in California where fellow House Democrats and a panel of experts shot down Trump’s claims about widespread fraud and expressed confidence in state elections.
A Berkeley IGS Poll from a year ago found that California voters support requiring first-time voters to show ID to prove citizenship in order to register, and that most supported requiring a government ID every time a voter casts a ballot. However, another Berkeley IGS Poll from last month found that strong majorities of California voters believe American democracy is under attack or being “tested.”
Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, said that overall confidence, “despite a sometimes volatile state and national narrative,” was “gratifying.”
“Election officials take connection to their community seriously. We recognize that our job is to facilitate their voting experience, and that voter participation is key to election security,” Logan said. “Regardless of party affiliation, our role as election officials focuses on the function and process of ensuring the voice of the electorate is heard and that compliance with the election laws adopted in our state is achieved.”
Jesse Salinas, president of the California Assn. of Clerks and Elections Officials and the registrar of voters in Yolo County, said local elections officials are “proud to be a steady source of trust at a consequential moment,” and stand ready to “open our doors to any voter who wants to see firsthand how our elections work and to answer any questions they may have.”
Times staff writer Iris Kwok contributed to this report.
If the last few weeks have shown us anything, it’s that the gubernatorial primary is an unexpectedly close race among a trio unlikely leaders: MAGA Republican Steve Hilton, and Democrats Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer.
Though Trump endorsed Hilton, a former Fox News host, a Hilton loss may be just what Trump wants — more fuel to fire up his MAGA base with false claims of rigged elections.
“Whether Hilton finishes first, second, or third, Trump will declare with zero evidence that there is voter fraud.,” Matt Barreto told me. He’s a professor of political science at UCLA and a founder of its Voting Rights Project, meant to promote free and fair elections.
And since California will probably take days or weeks to count all the ballots, a tight race will be fertile ground for those fraudulent fraud claims. President Trump has already started, clearly planning to use our primary to further his push to assert federal control of state-run elections.
California is not, of course, dishonest in its voting, and Trump has whined about elections for so long that this rhetoric might elicit little more than a shrug from most. But California elections matter at this pivotal moment only months before the midterms. Fraud claims here will further erode trust in our electoral system and could provide Trump with ammunition for interference across the country.
Voter fraud claims may also test a new California law meant to protect real election integrity and trust — a law (Senate Bill 73, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last week) that has received little notice but one that could provide a model of protection for the rest of the U.S. It stops law enforcement agents, including federal agents, from “providing unauthorized access, disruption, modification, or seizure of voter rolls, voter lists, or certified voting technology,” without a court order.
Call it the Sheriff Chad Bianco Act.
Bianco, another MAGA gubernatorial hopeful, seized hundreds of thousands of ballots from a recent election, claiming he was investigating the kind of wrongdoing Trump constantly alleges without proof. State Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), a former federal prosecutor, said the warrant Bianco obtained from a friendly judge was “woefully deficient.”
So Umberg helped pass the measure to “protect the integrity of California elections” from “rogue law enforcement officials,” he said.
And he’s not just talking about Bianco.
“I am worried about interference in the election by federal authorities,” Umberg said. “I believe Donald Trump when he says, ‘I’m going to interfere in the election.’”
Umberg is so concerned that he has two other bills in the works he hopes will be law by November. One would stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from being present at polling places. The other would make it illegal for anyone running for a third term as president to appear on the California ballot.
The buildup of fraud claims around California elections and the pushback from legislators like Umberg is a background battle that hasn’t received much attention, but one that is real and consequential.
Trump, through demands for voter rolls by the U.S. Department of Justice, the promotion of the SAVE Act, vague threats of ICE or other federal agents at polls, and the placement of election deniers in key federal rolls has gutted safeguards for voting on the national level.
States have been slow to meet the threat, largely waiting for November to see how it plays out. California, to it’s credit, isn’t so complacent.
The strange circumstances of this particular California election may be a test for both sides. Barreto, the UCLA voting expert, said he thinks “Hilton has the highest probability of finishing first on Tuesday with Becerra close by in second, and Steyer in third.”
But that could — and probably would — change as more ballots are counted.
By Thursday, Barreto said, it’s probable (far from certain) that Becerra is in the lead and Hilton is second.
“There will definitely be millions more ballots counted on Wednesday and Thursday and they will be disproportionately Democratic and contribute to both Becerra and Steyer numbers,” he said.
Maybe pushing Steyer into second? Again, a long shot. But possible.
Democrats have been holding on to their ballots until the last minute this year, with a huge number waiting until just the last few days to vote. It’s possible (though unlikely) that by sheer numbers, Democratic voters will propel both Steyer and Becerra toward November.
We do know that Republicans, despite their smaller numbers, have been voting, and trusting the postal service with their ballots this time around at a fairly high rate. That’s despite Trump’s claims that mail-in voting is inherently fraudulent.
So at the same time that we are expecting a big influx of Democratic ballots in coming days, Republicans may be closer to their voting peak, meaning Hilton’s numbers could top out on election night.
If Hilton doesn’t make the top three, after having been in the lead during in-person voting, MAGA will most certainly lose its collective mind.
And Trump will have something just as good as a Republican governor in the Golden State — “proof” we cheated.
Less than two hours after polling stations closed on Sunday, it was clear that Colombia’s presidential race would be settled in a run-off between two finalists: hard-right political outsider Abelardo de la Espriella and leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda.
Though the overall result surprised few, de la Espriella’s strong showing upended pollsters’ predictions.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
Cepeda, President Gustavo Petro’s chosen successor, had been expected to win the most votes, based on public opinion surveys.
But instead, de la Espriella came in first place, winning 43.74 percent of the vote. Cepeda trailed with 40.90 percent.
Supporters of de la Espriella, a criminal defence lawyer, held rapturous celebrations in the coastal city of Barranquilla, where the candidate has an office.
“Colombia won, and with more than 10 million votes, democracy won,” said Elsa Suarez, a de la Espriella voter living in Bogota.
The far-right candidate has modelled himself after politicians like Donald Trump in the United States and Javier Milei in Argentina, flamboyant media personalities who won the presidency despite having little to no political experience.
Like them, de la Espriella has pledged a return to “law and order”, as well as a pared-back national government and policies to support traditional family values.
Notably, he promises to use an “iron fist” to stamp out crime and build megaprisons to jail criminals, mimicking the policies of Salvadoran strongman Nayib Bukele.
Analysts say de la Espriella’s populist messaging resonated with voters in Colombia’s interior, where urban crime is a growing concern.
Electoral maps show de la Espriella besting Cepeda in 16 of the country’s 32 departments, primarily in the heart of Colombia and along the border with Venezuela.
“In more central areas and closer to the capitals, people prioritise security,” explained Laura Bonilla, the deputy director at the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (PARES), a Bogota-based research nonprofit.
By contrast, de la Espriella’s security messaging failed to sway voters along the coast and in border areas afflicted by rebel violence.
Bonilla argues that people in these regions instead place greater value on the socioeconomic issues that Cepeda represents, as the continuity candidate for Petro’s Historic Pact party.
“Over the past four years, they have received constant attention from the government,” said Bonilla, citing state development projects under the Petro administration.
Colombian presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda of the Historic Pact party holds a news conference in Bogota, Colombia, on June 1 [Enea Lebrun/Reuters]
A blow to the conservative establishment
De la Espriella’s success also highlights growing anti-establishment sentiment in Colombia, according to experts.
The lawyer, who has never run for public office before, comfortably beat his main rival on the right, Senator Paloma Valencia, who was backed by former President Alvaro Uribe, the figurehead of Colombian conservatism.
Initially, Sunday’s election was predicted to be a close race between Valencia and de la Espriella, both of whom lagged behind Cepeda in the polls.
But as Sunday’s ballots were tallied, Valencia flopped with less than 7 percent of the vote.
Miguel Silva, a Colombian political consultant, credited some of de la Espriella’s success to his campaign messaging.
De la Espriella, he explained, used his campaign to draw a distinction between the haves and the have-nots, those who have benefitted from the government and those who feel ignored.
“He [succeeded] by portraying himself and the people he represents as ‘Los Nunca’ and by portraying Paloma and her followers as ‘Los Siempre’,” Silva said, using the Spanish words for “The Nevers” and “The Always”.
Pollsters predicted the right would be divided in the first round, paving the way for Cepeda to win the most votes, but de la Espriella captured millions of votes from traditional conservatives, marking a shift in Colombia’s political landscape.
In Bogota, the only province in the country’s interior to vote for Cepeda, the left-wing candidate’s supporters were shocked by Sunday’s results.
“Everyone is a little surprised,” said Juan Camilo Rodriguez, who voted for Cepeda. “These results don’t match the polls.”
Newspapers at a Bogota newsstand show the results of the first round of Colombia’s presidential election on June 1 [Enea Lebrun/Reuters]
Petro himself had hammered his base to flood the polls, warning that the left’s chances of success could be hampered by electoral fraud.
The outgoing president rejected last night’s results, which were based on the “pre-conteo”, or preliminary count, a non-legally binding process.
Instead, Petro called on the public to wait for the official, scrutinised count, which will be released in the coming days.
Cepeda echoed the president’s scepticism in a speech on Sunday night. “Only once the vote-counting committees have fully, clearly, and thoroughly clarified this matter, will we comment on tonight’s results,” he told supporters.
But the candidate appeared to mellow his stance this morning, acknowledging that there was no evidence of irregularities in the vote. He trailed de la Espriella by more than 670,000 votes.
Experts warn that Cepeda is losing precious time by focusing on fraud allegations and should instead concentrate on swaying moderate voters.
“By crying fraud so early, it’s hard to bring more voters to the table,” said Silva.
A second round of voting, between Cepeda and de la Espriella, is scheduled for June 21.
Up for grabs are more than a million votes for centrist candidate Sergio Fajardo and 1.6 million for Paloma Valencia. While Valencia endorsed de la Espriella, her running mate, moderate politician Juan Daniel Oviedo, did not.
Miguel Jaramillo Lujan, a Colombian political strategist, said the final two candidates must tread carefully in the next three weeks to prevail.
“As the saying goes, whoever makes fewer mistakes will be the winner.”
