Nobody understands the frustration of “harvested” ballots and seemingly endless vote-counting in California better than Steve Cooley.
Cooley’s name resurfaced on social media this week in an old news clip about Kamala Harris’ come-from-behind victory in the California attorney general race back in 2010. Cooley, the Republican candidate as well as the district attorney of L.A. County at the time, declared victory on November 2 of that year after initial results showed him with a lead that at one point grew as large as 8%.
‘This is a f**king mess, and there’s no will in California to clean it up.’
Cooley told Blaze News that he felt a growing sense of confidence as he watched the returns come in. “Those numbers are pretty good,” he recalled thinking.
“The night of the election, when they counted all the ballots cast that day, and they included all of the absentees, I was ahead,” he said.
However, he quickly noted that the race was still “within 1%.”
That narrow lead prompted an automatic count of all ballots cast, including provisional ballots. In general, provisional ballots are “harvested,” Cooley said, and Harris “slaughtered” him once the provisional ballots were included.
“She beat me in all 58 counties — and it wasn’t even close.”
By November 25, three weeks after Cooley’s victory appeared to be sealed, Harris had been declared the winner.
At the time, Cooley declined to request a recount since he would have been stuck with the bill if the recount failed to change the result. “It would have cost millions of dollars,” he claimed.
“So it’s a great incentive to not ask for a recount.”
Still, Cooley believes that Democrat operatives played a pivotal role in handing the race to Harris. He claimed that “mostly Democrats … do ballot-harvesting” and that “Kamala Harris was the default choice on a high percentage of the provisional ballots.”
Kamala Harris’ office did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
Spencer Pratt on Primary Election Day. Ronaldo Bolaños/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images.
Cooley indicated the electoral process in California has not improved in the last 16 years. Though he stopped short of calling it “rigged,” as President Donald Trump has done, Cooley believes the system is vulnerable to fraud, especially since every active registered voter in the state receives a live ballot and the voter rolls may yet still include individuals who have died, left the state, or are otherwise ineligible to vote.
“Those ballots are out there, ready to be picked up, harvested, whatever. And that’s where the fraud comes in,” he explained.
The Trump DOJ has pledged to audit the voter rolls in California, but Cooley notes such an audit will not affect the 2026 primary, even after Spencer Pratt was boxed out of the general election for L.A. mayor despite a 40,000-vote edge over far-left City Councilwoman Nithya Raman on Election Night, June 2. Raman will advance to face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in November.
“Those questionable ballots have already been harvested and dropped off or sent in or mailed in by individuals who are essentially taking a mailed-out ballot and returning it on behalf of someone else.”
“And there’s no undoing that without a massive commitment of resources, and the registrar recorders are not going to do it. … They don’t want to spend the time, money, and energy in doing it, because all it does is point out how incompetent they are. They’re not going to make any effort to prove their own incompetence and failures,” Cooley said.
“This is a f**king mess, and there’s no will in California to clean it up. No will.”
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Attorney general, California, Kamala harris, Voter rolls, Politics, Ballot harvesting