Even after all the ballots have been cast on Tuesday, it might be a while before Californians know the results of some significant races this election, given the state’s notoriously slow counting.
California has made headlines for trailing other states when it comes to tallying its votes. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a letter last month to all 52 county elections officials urging them to “accurately count every lawfully cast ballot as quickly as possible,” saying that “mis- and dis-information” can spread in the time between Election Day and when the results are certified as official.
The delay is due in part to ways California has endeavored to make it easier to vote since the COVID-19 pandemic: Every registered voter gets a mail-in ballot, and ballots are valid as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day and arrive at county elections offices within seven days of the election. California’s one of eight states that allow all elections to be conducted by mail, with varying grace periods for ballots that are postmarked by Election Day. Those grace periods are at risk with the U.S. Supreme Court currently weighing a change that would require ballots to arrive by Election Day.
For mail-in ballots that arrive before Tuesday, elections officials can begin certifying signatures and preparing the ballots for counting; for those that come in later, elections clerks must do this work later, delaying results.
According to voter data firm Political Data Inc., nearly 17% of registered California voters had cast their ballots as of Monday afternoon, a similar return rate as in 2022.
Paul Mitchell, the founder of Political Data Inc., said he expects a higher turnout than in 2022, since early returns already have shown a higher Republican turnout, and some of the Democrats hanging onto their ballots are “high-propensity voters.”
“There’s a lot of evidence here that we’re probably headed towards 38%, 40% turnout in total, rather than 33% which was the turnout in 2022,” he said.
Elections experts say California’s high proportion of competitive districts and generous windows to fix errors have also added to the longer wait time for results.
Changes aim to speed up counting
Several recent changes could make a dent in when Californians know the outcome of certain races.
The first is a change to how long elections officials have to count: Due to Assembly Bill 5, which was signed into law last year, counties now have 13 days to finish counting most ballots, down from 30 days. Newsom pointed to the change during a news conference last week as a move toward “timely ballot counting.” County officials still have 30 days to finalize their official results.
However, Jesse Salinas, Yolo County’s top elections official and the president of the California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials, said the new law doesn’t apply to the ballots that take the most time to count, including those filed by voters who registered on election day and those where a signature doesn’t match what’s on file. State law provides a weeks-long window for those questions to be addressed.
“I’m hearing these comments about ‘We should be done by the 13th day,’ — that’s legally not possible by state law,” he said.
Another is trying to pare down the glut of mail-in ballots that come into ballot boxes on Election Day, which slows down vote counting, according to Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.
A survey conducted by the foundation found that 26 of the state’s 58 counties will give voters the option of bringing their mail-in ballot to the elections office Tuesday and having it scanned and counted that day as an “in-person” ballot. The change was made possible by Assembly Bill 626, passed in 2023.
In Placer County, where the system debuted in 2024 as “sign, scan and go,” officials said it cut post-election processing time by about three to four days.
Some have issues with the assertion that the long tabulation process makes it easy 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 is based on repeatedly discredited claims of voter fraud. She said the narrative that anyone is tampering in elections has been “artificially generated” by politicians like President Donald Trump to undermine the electoral process.
“I think the focus should not be on fixing something that is flawed or wrong, because that long count is a product of making sure that every ballot is verified — indeed, just the opposite of the claims around fraud,” she said.