Why California election results could take weeks

from Kate WolfeCalMatters

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Even after all ballots are cast on Tuesday, it could be a while before Californians know the results of some key races in this election, given the state’s notoriously slow count.

California has made headlines for lagging behind other countries when it comes to counting its votes. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a letter last month to all 52 county election officials, urging them to “accurately count every legally submitted ballot as quickly as possible,” saying “misinformation and misinformation” can spread in the time between Election Day and when the results are certified as official.

The delay is due in part to the ways California has sought to make voting easier in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic: Every registered voter receives a ballot by mail, and ballots are valid as long as they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive at county election offices within seven days of the election. of California one of eight states which allow all elections to be conducted by mail, with different grace periods for ballots that are postmarked on Election Day. These grace periods are at risk with the US Supreme Court currently considering a change that would require ballots to arrive by Election Day.

For mail-in ballots that arrive before Tuesday, election officials can begin verifying signatures and preparing ballots for counting; for those who come later, election officials have to do that work later, delaying the results.

According to voter data firm Political Data Inc., nearly 17 percent of registered voters in California had cast ballots as of Monday afternoon, a similar return rate to 2022.

Paul Mitchell, the founder of Political Data Inc., said he expects higher turnout than in 2022 because early results already show higher Republican turnout and some of the Democrats who are sticking to their ballots are “high propensity voters.”

“There’s a lot of evidence here that we’re probably headed for 38%, 40% overall turnout, instead of the 33% that was the turnout in 2022,” he said.

Election experts say that in California high proportion of competitive areas and generous error correction windows have also added to the longer wait times for results.

The changes aim to speed up the census

Several recent changes could affect when Californians know the outcome of certain races.

The first is a change in how long election officials have to count: because Bill 5which was signed last year, counties now have 13 days to complete the counting of most ballots, a reduction of 30 days. Newsom pointed to the change during a press conference last week as a step toward a “timely ballot count.” County officials still have 30 days to finalize their official results.

However, Jesse Salinas, Yolo County’s top elections official and president of the California Association of Election Clerks and Officials, said the new law doesn’t apply to the ballots that take the longest to count, including those cast by voters who registered on Election Day and those where the signature doesn’t match what’s on file. State law provides a one-week window to address these issues.

“I’m hearing these comments about ‘We have to be ready by the 13th’ — that’s legally impossible under state law,” he said.

Another is trying to reduce the glut of mail-in ballots that go into the polls on Election Day, which slows down vote counting, according to Kim Alexander, president of the California Voters Foundation.

A survey by the foundation found that 26 of the state’s 58 counties will give voters the option to take their mail-in ballot to the election office on Tuesday and have it scanned and counted that day as an “in-person” ballot. The change was made possible by Assembly Bill 626adopted in 2023

In Placer County, where the system debuted in 2024 as “sign, scan and go,” officials said it cuts post-election processing times with about three to four days.

Some take issue with the claim that the long calculation process makes it easier for people to sow distrust in election results.

Mindy Romero, a political sociologist and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California, said the argument rests on repeatedly discredited allegations of voter fraud. She said the narrative that someone was tampering with the election was “artificially generated” by politicians like President Donald Trump to undermine the election process.

“I don’t think the focus should be on correcting anything that’s insufficient or wrong, because this long count is a product of making sure every ballot is verified — in fact, the exact opposite of fraud claims,” ​​she said.

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