Is Katharine McPhee an Election Denier?

Last night the Los Angeles mayor’s race was called, and Karen Bass defeated Rick Caruso to become the city’s first woman mayor. This is great news for the city and horrible news for some of the most empty-headed celebrities on the planet. Caruso, who outspent Bass 11 to 1, has some very dumb friends in very high places, and several of them showed up in his Instagram comments last night to declare that LA would spiral into Mad Max territory now that the guy who built The Grove won’t be in charge.

Among them were American Idol runner-up and outed Republican Katharine McPhee, who has long stumped for the man who was a registered GOP member until he decided he wanted to be mayor. She decided to make a bold claim that borders on election denial.

Here’s what I think is going on. Since 2020, every registered California voter has received a mail-in ballot. It’s a great way to increase voter turnout, since no one has to take off work or wait in line to cast their vote. In L.A. County, 76 percent of voters voted by mail, meaning that there were 1.5 million ballots to receive and count. Voters can also check if their mail-in ballot has been counted using California’s Where’s My Ballot website.

This is all to say that it takes a while for every single ballot to be counted. If we are (generously) operating in good faith towards McPhee, we might assume that she doesn’t understand how elections work. Perhaps she doesn’t read, and didn’t realize that Bass was beating Caruso by a little more than six points at the time he conceded. Perhaps she is unaware of the fact that counting 1.5 million ballots takes a long time, and maybe she doesn’t understand that her one ballot doesn’t mean much when Bass definitively won.

The other, less generous option is that McPhee is trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of an election in which her candidate has already conceded. I lean towards believing that she is just simple, based on literally everything else she has ever said or done; a true election denier would be on more of a war path. Infographics would be shared, front-facing camera videos would be posted, things of that nature. Instead, one of McPhee’s recent Instagram stories finds her sharing Nikki Reed’s photo of a latte that says “Happiness is the journey” on the foam. The journey to picking a loser candidate, am I right?