California can take weeks to finish counting ballots after the polls close.
Republicans out West have learned to brace for the long wait.
But Bill O’Reilly just told his audience that Donald Trump’s pick for governor faces a far bigger problem.
Bill O’Reilly Says the Deck Is Stacked Before the First Ballot Gets Counted
Bill O’Reilly didn’t bother with a long wind-up on his No Spin podcast.
The veteran broadcaster offered some kind words for Steve Hilton, the Republican running for Governor of California, and then pulled the rug out from under him in the very next breath.
“Steve is a good campaigner, and he’s a sincere man, I believe,” O’Reilly said. “He can’t win! Because counties in California are rigged. You won’t get the vote count ‘til three weeks after election day! Come on! Everybody knows this. So, Hilton’s doing a good job up against [Xavier] Becerra, who is like one of the worst civil servants I’ve ever seen. He was in the Biden administration. But Steve can’t win.”
That’s a gut punch from a man millions of Trump voters spent years watching every night on cable.
And it lands at an awkward moment. President Trump endorsed Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, and Hilton now faces Becerra, who served as Joe Biden’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The public polling hasn’t done Hilton many favors. A Manhattan Institute survey put Becerra at 55% among likely voters, with Hilton at 38%. A Los Angeles Times poll from August showed nearly the same gap, 55% to 37%.
But Hilton’s own campaign tells a different story. A poll his team commissioned put Becerra at 45.7% and Hilton at 40.1%, with 14.1% of voters still undecided. Hilton answered the doubters on X, writing, “They said the governor’s race was ‘over.’ We’re about to prove them wrong.”
Campaign polls deserve a grain of salt. So do polls in a state where plenty of Republicans have learned to keep their mouths shut when a stranger calls asking about politics.
Why Trump Started Asking Hard Questions About California’s Count
This fight didn’t start with O’Reilly.
Trump raised alarms about the count during the California primaries, when Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt slipped behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and city councilwoman Nithya Raman as the tally dragged on.
California law gives counties up to 30 days after an election to process votes. The state also counts late-arriving ballots, as long as they carry an Election Day postmark and show up before a set deadline.
Trump looked at that setup and didn’t like what it added up to. He said “they’re rigging the election” and followed with, “Now maybe we caught them and maybe they won’t be able to get away with it.”
Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed the President, and plenty of Trump supporters on social media piled on.
Here’s the part Democrats would rather nobody think about too hard. Ordinary folks don’t need a secret plot to feel uneasy about a count that stretches across most of a month. They just need a calendar.
And the worry isn’t some new invention of the MAGA movement. Back in 2005, the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, warned that “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
California now mails a ballot to every active registered voter in the state.
Those ballots leave the controlled setting of a polling place. They sit on kitchen counters, in apartment mailrooms, and in nursing homes where nobody from the county watches who fills them out. That gap in the chain of custody doesn’t prove anybody cheated. It does explain why millions of Americans want much tighter rules than the ones Sacramento writes.
Steve Hilton Took a More Careful Road Than Trump
Hilton himself hasn’t gone as far as O’Reilly.
During the drawn-out June count, CNN’s Erin Burnett pressed him on whether he feared fraud or simply felt frustrated by slow counting. Hilton told her his campaign was “keeping an eye on it,” with “teams standing by, lawyers standing by,” but added that “we’ve seen nothing that would give us cause to intervene in that way.”
That’s a measured answer from a candidate who needs independents in a deep blue state.
But the Becerra camp hasn’t cut him any slack for it. Becerra spokesman Jonathan Underland greeted a summer poll by touting his boss for “standing up against the hateful and disastrous policies pushed by Trump and his endorsed candidate, Steve Hilton.”
So Hilton gets painted as Trump’s man no matter what he says about the count.
Gavin Newsom’s New Law Gives Away the Game
Democrats in Sacramento wave off every question about how California counts its votes.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) insisted in a statement that “In California, election officials work every day to maintain accurate voter rolls and ensure that only eligible voters are registered.”
Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) went further and called Trump’s claims “The ramblings of a mad king.”
But look at what Newsom actually signed in September.
The Governor put his name on a package of 13 election bills. One of them, AB 5, requires election officials to finish counting all ballots by the 13th day after Election Day unless certain conditions apply.
Think about that for a second. If a 30-day count posed no problem at all, why would Newsom’s own party bother writing a law to cut it by more than half? Democrats spent months mocking Trump for complaining about slow counts. Then they passed a bill that concedes he had a point.
Even 13 days is a long time to wait. Voters in plenty of other states learn the winners before bedtime.
The rest of the package tells its own story. One bill makes it a felony to seize ballots, election records, or voting machines before officials certify the results. Another bars police from making most arrests within 200 feet of a polling place on Election Day.
Newsom sold the whole thing as protection against Trump, saying, “These bills today build upon the wall California has built to safeguard our electoral process.”
Funny how Democrats suddenly love walls once one can keep federal eyes off their ballot boxes.
California’s Count Heads Into the National Spotlight
O’Reilly’s prediction may say more about voter trust than about any single county clerk.
When a broadcaster with his reach tells conservatives the outcome is baked in, some of them may decide their vote doesn’t matter. That kind of fatalism helps nobody on the Right, in the governor’s race or in the House contests further down the ballot.
But the frustration behind O’Reilly’s words didn’t come out of nowhere. Californians watched a big-city mayoral count crawl along for weeks. Then they watched Newsom shorten the count by law while his allies dismissed every complaint as paranoia.
And the November midterms will drag that whole system under a national microscope. If close races in California hang in limbo for days while ballots trickle in, expect the same fight to erupt all over again, only louder.
Democrats keep calling questions about election integrity an attack on democracy. Voters keep asking them anyway.
Sooner or later, Sacramento will have to answer with something besides insults.
Sources:
Mediaite, “‘He Can’t Win!’ Bill O’Reilly Claims Steve Hilton Doomed Because California Elections Are ‘Rigged’”
The Daily Signal, “Is Becerra Dodging Steve Hilton? Republican Calls Out Rival as Governor’s Race Heats Up”
ABC7 Los Angeles, “Becerra maintains commanding lead over Hilton in California governor’s race, poll shows”
Newsweek, “Steve Hilton’s chances of beating Becerra to flip California for GOP”
Times of San Diego, “California’s next governor discernible as Becerra, Hilton pull ahead”
Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, “Governor Newsom signs new laws to protect California elections from Trump interference”
CalMatters, coverage of Newsom’s election bill package
Commission on Federal Election Reform, “Building Confidence in US Elections” (2005)
