Why California is taking longer to count ballots
Votes will be cast in California on Tuesday evening, but the outcome of many races could remain uncertain for days, even weeks.
It’s a well-known waiting game unique to the state that draws public scrutiny and debate when big races or thorny issues are on the line.
But the delay is largely related to the fact that most of the state’s 22 million registered voters vote by mail — and to an extensive vetting process that requires more than just machine voting.
In California, this means verifying every ballot through a series of steps, including checking signatures and ensuring voters don’t vote again elsewhere.
If a signature does not match what is on file, as has been the case with those who accidentally sign with characters from a foreign language, county officials are required to contact the voter to give that person the opportunity to correct the correct signature.
The state also counts ballots that arrive late, as long as they are postmarked with the correct date and arrive within seven days. And while many other states must count ballots within a week, California law allows 30 days.
“It seems like it’s taking forever, because it is,” said Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc., a data company based in California.
Mr. Mitchell added that the news media and political pundits have done a disservice to voters when they place too much emphasis on how long the results will take. And that can give rise to conspiracy theories, especially when a candidate is in the lead on election night but loses after the rest of the ballots are counted.
“You have a combination of those two issues,” he said. “One is how long it lasts, and the other is — and this is happening across the country — whether the late vote is a blue shift or a red shift.”
California’s election process — and a history of candidates making significant gains after initial returns — could delay race calling by news outlets this year and prevent campaigns from conceding on election night. That could be the case for a Senate race featuring three Democratic members of Congress and Steve Garvey, a former baseball star who is the leading Republican candidate.
Voting by mail has grown in popularity over the past decade, but quickly became the standard in recent years.
In November 2020, the coronavirus pandemic prompted election officials to send every active registered California voter a ballot that could be mailed in or dropped off at voting centers, collection sites that replaced polling places.
Now, more than 90 percent of votes in California come by mail. And they often need a thorough check.
“They tend to have more stray marks, more corrections by the voter that can hinder them from moving smoothly through the voting equipment,” said Ryan Ronco, president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials.
“For example, someone might vote on the wrong oval, cross it out and write, ‘Not this one – I mean this one,’” he said. “All of these ballots have to go through a different process to be corrected so that we can count voter intent.”
There’s also the matter of good old procrastination.
Voters often wait until the very last day to return their ballot. Which leads to a huge backup in counting.
As of Monday, the Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office had received approximately 573,000 ballots. The county has 5.7 million registered voters and uses a 140,000-square-foot former Fry’s Electronics store as a vote processing center.
Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for the registrar’s office, said the office has encouraged voters not to wait until Election Day. “But historically we’ve seen people do that,” he said.
Orange County officials recently invested $4 million in equipment to scan bar codes and take photos of signatures, according to Bob Page, the county’s registrar of voters.
“We wanted to have the capacity to process more at once, which would logically be faster,” he said. “But if we get 500,000 ballots on Election Day, it will still cost us time.”
California is one of them eight states that would allow elections to be conducted entirely by mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. California tested mail-in elections in select counties before the pandemic and permanently expanded the approach statewide after it took place highest turnout rate in decades in November 2020.
More like Republicans questioned California’s process after Democrats won crucial votes in the 2018 congressional races as election offices processed ballots weeks after Election Day. No fraud was found. In 2020, former President Donald J. Trump cast doubt on mail-in elections, discourage other Republicans of supporting the approach on a national basis.
Kim Alexander of the California Voter Foundation, a nonpartisan group that aims to improve the voting process, said the vote count needed to be accelerated even if the election was secure in the state.
“There’s a perception problem, you know, people are seeing the results change and it’s raising fears in some people that something questionable has happened,” she said.
She noted that it was not helpful for voters or candidates to have to wait so long to hear the results, and that the process also shortened the time available for a recount.
But Ms. Alexander said some counties, especially those in rural areas where there is less aid, were relying heavily on the allocated days to count votes. And she said California’s current method offers voters a number of fail-safes to ensure they aren’t turned away.
“There are all these restrictions that are being imposed on the voting process in other places that allow for a quicker election result, but in the process could disenfranchise many voters,” she said. “So it’s a trade-off.”