Even after polls close Tuesday, Californians may have to wait days — and in some close races, longer — to learn who won, as the state’s vote-counting process again takes center stage.
California has repeatedly drawn attention for reporting final election results more slowly than many other states. Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a letter to county elections officials urging them to “accurately count every legally cast vote as quickly as possible,” warning that misinformation and disinformation can spread in the gap between Election Day and the official certification of results.
The slower timeline is partly a result of voting changes California adopted to make casting a ballot easier, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Every registered voter is mailed a ballot, and mail ballots are valid as long as they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive at county elections offices within seven days.
California is one of eight states that allow all-mail elections, though deadlines for receiving postmarked ballots vary by state. Those grace periods could face changes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether states may require ballots to arrive by Election Day.
For mail ballots that arrive before Tuesday, elections workers can begin verifying signatures and preparing the ballots to be counted. Ballots that arrive later must go through that process after Election Day, slowing the release of results.
As of Monday afternoon, nearly 17% of California’s registered voters had cast ballots, according to Political Data Inc., a firm that analyzes election data. That early turnout rate was similar to the pace in 2022.
Paul Mitchell, the company’s founder, said he expects overall turnout to exceed the 2022 level. Early returns have shown stronger Republican participation, he said, while some Democrats who had not yet returned ballots are considered highly likely voters.
“There are a lot of indications that we’re probably headed toward a total turnout of 38% or 40%, rather than the 33% turnout we saw in 2022,” Mitchell said.
Election experts have also pointed to California’s large number of competitive districts and the state’s generous deadlines for voters to fix ballot problems as reasons some results can take longer to settle.
Several recent changes could affect how quickly Californians see results in certain races.
One major change involves the amount of time counties have to complete most ballot counting. Under Assembly Bill 5, signed into law last year, counties now have 13 days to finish counting most ballots, down from the previous 30-day window. Newsom highlighted the change during a news conference last week as a step toward speeding up the vote count.
County officials still have 30 days to finalize official election results.
Jesse Salinas, Yolo County’s top elections official and president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials, said the new 13-day requirement does not apply to ballots that take longer to process. Those include ballots from people who registered on Election Day and ballots with signature mismatches. State law gives voters several weeks to resolve those issues.
“I hear comments like, ‘We should be done by day 13,’ but that is not legally possible under state law,” Salinas said.
Another effort to speed up counting aims to reduce the large number of mail ballots dropped off on Election Day, which can delay processing, said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.
A survey by the foundation found that 26 of California’s 58 counties will give voters the option Tuesday to bring their mail ballot to the elections office, where it can be scanned and counted the same day as an in-person ballot. The option was authorized through Assembly Bill 626, approved in 2023.
In Placer County, where the system debuted in 2024 under the name “sign, scan and go,” officials said it reduced post-election processing time by about three to four days.
Not everyone agrees that California’s lengthy counting process fuels distrust in elections.
Mindy Romero, a political sociologist and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California, said that criticism often rests on allegations of voter fraud that have been repeatedly debunked. She said the notion that elections are being manipulated has been “artificially created” by politicians such as President Donald Trump to undermine confidence in the electoral process.
“I don’t think we should focus on fixing something that is wrong or flawed, because that longer count is the product of making sure every vote is verified,” Romero said. “It is actually the opposite of the fraud allegations.”
Original source: CalMatters
