There is no urgency to fix

from Maya S. MillerCalMatters

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Everyone agrees that it would be nice to know the results of the California election sooner.

What they cannot agree on is whether and how to do this.

Glacial pace of statewide primary vote counting – took a week before enough ballots were counted call the marquee governor race — once again captured national attention and sparked a new round of conspiracy theories as well as serious calls for reform.

“It’s hard to overstate the extent to which California is an outlier in its slow vote counting compared to virtually every other state or almost every other industrialized democracy.” wrote Nate Silverthe popular election data analyst, on social media three days after the polls closed. One of Silver’s most liked answers argued that the delay was a deliberate effort to falsify the result.

Even the New York Times the editorial board joined in the criticism by announcing that delayed results in California “damage faith in government” and prompt voters to believe election skeptics like President Donald Trump and his allies. Gov. Gavin Newsom urged counties to produce results more quickly, saying the delays undermine confidence in the results and provide fertile ground for misinformation.

But state Democratic leaders, along with some advocates, argue that speeding up the count would mean disenfranchising voters. Most still refuse to consider changes that would make voting more difficult, even if they affect only a small fraction of voters.

“If you want results on election night, you’ll have to go back to in-person voting, much earlier deadlines for mail-in returns and ultimately disenfranchise voters,” the lawmaker said Gayle Pellerinchairman of her House Election Commission and former Santa Cruz County Clerk.

In a reality that seems insulated from public discontent, Pellerin says the count is going as smoothly as ever.

“It’s actually going very well and the election officials are working around the clock and we’re getting results,” she said.

Several of Pellerin’s Democratic colleagues who supported the election reform bills, including an Assembly member Mark Berman from Palo Alto and Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana, said they would not support limiting access in favor of faster results.

“As a candidate, believe me, I would love for the count to go faster,” the senator said. Scott Wienera Democrat from San Francisco and chairman of his House Select Committee who is running for Congress. “I don’t think the right answer is to disenfranchise people.”

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, too sees no urgency in counting faster. She dismissed concerns about a slow return as a talking point for Trump. She is expected to easily win another four-year term this fall.

“I know the value of being fast to some people,” Weber told CalMatters in April. “To me, accuracy is much more important.”

While The Times’ editorial took aim at California’s seven-day grace period for late-arriving ballots — a policy that is on thin ice as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs whether to strike down a similar law in Mississippi — much of the delay stems from the sheer volume of ballots sent by mail which counties receive on election day or the day before.

Who should pay for faster results?

During the pandemic, California implemented a universal vote-by-mail system in which every registered voter receives a ballot by mail.

And Californians love it: Nearly 90 percent of the votes cast in last year’s statewide special election were mail-in ballots. In contrast, 10 years ago less than 60% of voters in the general election voted by mail.

But mail-in ballots require much more time and energy to process than in-person ballots that are submitted by machine at a location. They also require more money, but California counties have not received funding to make up for it, said Eric McGee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

“They’re doing the best they can with the budget they have,” McGee said, referring to county recorders. “But it’s a lot to handle.”

California also does not contribute current funds to election districts such as some other countries do.

In Colorado, which also has a universal mail-in system and which the Times praised for faster results, the state pays 45 percent of the cost if there is a statewide decision on the ballot. Hawaii splits costs with districts for state or federal elections. And Arizona reimburses its counties $1.25 per active registered voter for the presidential primary.

More than half the primary ballots that arrived in Yolo County this month were vote-by-mail ballots returned on Election Day, Clerk Jesse Salinas said. County officials must ensure that voters are registered, vote only once and have an authentic signature.

County scanners can find an exact match for only a fraction of ballots — about 30 percent for Yolo County, Salinas estimates. The remaining 70% must be manually checked by humans.

“When people ask, ‘Well, why don’t you work more?'” Salinas said, he tells people, ‘Those of us who work at the polling centers work 19 days straight,’ including up to 15 days of early voting.

On Election Day, every square inch of Yolo County’s crowded election office is taken up by boxes full of vote-by-mail ballots. There is simply no room for more machines or workers, even if the state provides them. They will need a whole new building.

“When you have that much volume hitting you at the 11th hour, there’s no way you can get through it all overnight,” Salinas said.

Things have moved significantly faster than in recent years in Orange County, which made a $4 million investment in new mail-in ballot processing equipment. It took Clerk Bob Page and his staff just over a week to process more than 807,000 ballots, with staff working from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays as well as Saturday shifts.

Any financial help from the state would be extremely helpful, Salinas said. California covered the cost of Newsom’s 2021 recall election and 2025 state special election on redistricting, which Salinas said allowed him to upgrade his equipment.

But counties face other financial pressures. They are dealing with the loss of federal and state Medi-Cal dollars along with structural deficits that have forced departments to cut their budgets. Even in this election year, Salinas was told to cut $1.1 million.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.