Trump Called California's Elections Crooked. He's Wrong About Why.

Trump Called California's Elections Crooked. He's Wrong About Why.

When President Trump sat down with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, he went big, he went loud, and he ended up being right for entirely the wrong reasons.

Trump called California's elections "crooked," pointing to the state's multi-day vote count as evidence. "Do you think it's appropriate that they have an election and five days later they're nowhere close to picking a winner?" he asked, before storming off set and calling NBC "a one-sided, crooked network."

The count takes time because it's thorough. California accepts mail ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within seven days, requires signature verification, and mandates a 1% manual tally. NBC's own fact-checkers found no credible evidence of fraud.

California's elections are broken. Just not in the way Trump described.

A Primary System That Fails Everyone

California adopted its Top-Two primary in 2010 with Proposition 14. The pitch was compelling: open primaries, moderate candidates, less polarization. Simple, clean, democratic-sounding.

The results have been something else.

The same-party problem. When both finalists come from the same party, the general election offers no real choice. In 2024, that happened 15 times: 4 U.S. House races, 3 State Senate races, 8 State Assembly races. Nearly 10% of California's general election contests. You can have any color you want, as long as it's blue.

The spoiler problem moves, not disappears. Top-Two doesn't eliminate the spoiler effect. It relocates it. When multiple candidates from the same party split the primary vote, the other party's candidates advance. Party leaders respond by pressuring weaker candidates out and coordinating endorsements. The insider game that Top-Two was supposed to disrupt simply migrates upstream.

The 2026 gubernatorial race made this concrete. A crowded Democratic field split so badly that Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News host Steve Hilton, both Republicans, polled near the top throughout much of the primary. A Democrat-free general election was a genuine threat. Becerra edged through with 26.7% of the vote only after Swalwell, one of the top-polling Democrats, dropped out amid a sexual misconduct scandal. That the word "averted" applies tells you everything about the system's stability.

Partisan voters still set the table. Most Californians skip the primary. They show up in November expecting a real choice, not realizing the candidates were already selected by the most ideologically driven voters in each party. The system reshuffled the deck without changing who deals the cards.

The Fix That Isn't

FairVote has proposed applying ranked choice voting to the Top-Two primary to produce better finalists. It's a marginal improvement that misses the point. The bottleneck is restricting the general election to two candidates, full stop. Independents still have no viable path. Applying RCV to a broken structure doesn't fix the structure. When voters experience it inside a system that constrains their choices, they blame the method.

The Model That Works

Alaska's open primary sends the top four candidates to a general election decided by ranked choice voting, adopted in 2020 and first used in 2022. Moderate Republican Lisa Murkowski won reelection by building a coalition across party lines. Democrat Mary Peltola became the first Alaska Native to hold Alaska's House seat, in a state that leans Republican. Legislators from both parties built working majorities in both chambers.

Four finalists instead of two means independents have a real shot without winning the primary outright. Winners must earn majority support, not just mobilize a faction. California needs this model, not another variation of the system it already has.

What You Can Do?

Get involved through FairVote and Rank the Vote, both of which have local chapters working on state-level reform.

Don't accept half measures. Reforms that fail to deliver real improvement give a false sense of progress and undermine the movement's credibility.

Speak up. Tell chapter leaders that voters need solutions that genuinely expand choice, not cosmetic changes to a system that is already failing.

Trump was wrong about why California's elections are broken. On the fact that they are broken, he had a point.

Related: Why California's Top Two Primary System Fails Democracy

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