California still has lots of ballots left to count, more than one week after the primary. Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have seized on the slow count to spread conspiracy theories of election fraud.
But what’s actually behind the holdup? KQED’s Marisa Lagos explains why California counts ballots so slowly, and what could help speed up the count.
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This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:00] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:08] So it’s been more than a week since election day. And while many primary races have already been called, California’s still counting votes, and will be for a while. California is notoriously slow at counting ballots, making us an easy target for Republicans spreading conspiracies of election fraud.
Donald Trump [00:00:33] This tremendous evidence is nothing but evidence. The election was rigged. It was a dirty election. And it’s happening again right now in California. It’s happening right now.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:48] But there’s actually a pretty clear explanation for the wait, including the fact that California has one of the most accessible election systems in the country.
Marisa Lagos [00:01:00] We have a number of policies that have been enacted that are really aimed at giving everybody every opportunity to vote that we can.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:11] Today, what’s behind California’s slow vote count and what it would take to speed it up.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:25] Well, Marisa, am I trippin’ or are ballots taking a long time to count?
Marisa Lagos [00:01:30] You’re not trippin’, but they always kinda take a long time to count in California these days.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:37] Marisa Lagos is a politics and government correspondent for KQED. She’s also co-host of the Political Breakdown podcast.
Marisa Lagos [00:01:46] We are sitting here on Tuesday, a week out. So 7.7 million ballots have been processed so far, and there’s 1.7 billion left. So it’s not an insignificant number, but it’s the bulk of the ballots. And it’s, I think, out of line with what we’ve seen maybe in previous elections. What feels more urgent this year is we did have this messy governor’s race. And so there’s a lot of attention on it. And we were one of the only primaries last week. So I think there’s been a sort of outsized amount of attention and frustration at the slow count.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:25] And I guess, like, what effects are you seeing so far of this long count? I mean, like it’s this affecting confidence, for example, in our election process here in California.
Marisa Lagos [00:02:37] I’d say the long count does affect folks’ opinions of the election and their beliefs in the integrity of it, but I think the bigger factor is the president and other Republicans using it as a way to undercut confidence.
Donald Trump [00:02:53] Four days, and they aren’t even close to coming up with it.
Kristen Welker [00:02:56] That’s how they count the votes in California.
Donald Trump [00:02:57] You know why they’re doing that? Because they’re cheating on the election.
Kristen Welker [00:02:59] Do you have evidence to support that?
Donald Trump [00:03:01] All I have to do is look.
Marisa Lagos [00:03:03] President Trump has been attacking California’s election almost since the polls closed last Tuesday. He also had a pretty explosive interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press this weekend.
Donald Trump [00:03:14] Do you think it’s appropriate that they have an election and five days later, they’re nowhere close to picking a winner?
Kristen Welker [00:03:20] State and local officials acknowledge they are slow. They’re urging —
Donald Trump [00:03:23] No, they are crooked. They’re crooked.
Kristen Welker [00:03:25] — urging the votes to be counted quickly. That’s how they vote in California.
Donald Trump [00:03:27] They are crooked, just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked, and meet the press is crooked.
Marisa Lagos [00:03:32] I think if you didn’t have these attacks from folks up to and including President Trump, there probably wouldn’t be quite so much kind of consternation and concern.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:41] That’s one of the reasons why I think we wanted to talk to you about this, because I do think it is maybe worth just sort of unpacking for people, like how this count even happens. So why does California take so long to count its votes?
Marisa Lagos [00:03:57] I think there’s almost like three buckets of things here when we talk about delays. One is the policies that exist in California that send every voter a mail-in ballot that allow ballots to arrive within a week after election day, as long as they’re postmarked by then. And then there’s the resources, right? Just like, do county registrars have the money, the staff, the actual physical space? To do this counting quickly. And then there’s voter behavior. And I think that this election year, we’ve really seen that that has a big effect. What we did see this year based on tracking data analysis by some very smart people, smarter than me, is that Democrats were holding onto their ballots. It did seem like just the upheaval in the governor’s race, the sort of crowded nature of it, the exit of Eric Swalwell in April, the sudden rise of Xavier Becerra, all of that kind of contributed to this phenomenon of Democrats, progressives, I think in particular, waiting until the last minute. And so in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one, that’s going to really slow down the process. And it’s also going to create what’s called a red mirage, where you had the sort of initial results look stronger for Republicans and conservative candidates than what the ultimate vote count is going to look like. And I think that combination of the large number of ballots coming in late, and so that kind of slowing down the count, plus that red mirages has given an opening to folks like President Trump to kind of call things into question.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:41] You mentioned a bunch of these policies that we have in California that are really about expanding voter access. So what exactly is the process of counting ballots in California given these policies?
Marisa Lagos [00:05:56] We, during the pandemic especially, really expanded mail-in voting. So essentially every voter gets a mail- in ballot now. In recent elections, we’ve seen up to 80% of people vote by mail, so that in itself can cause delays because when ballots are being processed, essentially, if you go in and vote in person, all the checks of security to make sure you’re the person you’re saying you are and your signature matches and your address is correct happens before they hand you the ballot. When you mail in the ballot, that happens on the back end. And so what you have is election officials with stacks and stacks and boxes and boxes where they have to go through one by one and essentially verify that each individual ballot is valid, then they have run it through the system. And in some cases, you also have situations where say a signature doesn’t match. And so in some counties, they might reach out to you and say, Hey, did you file this ballot? The fact that you the ballots can arrive to a week after election day, obviously. Do even more, you know, to extend that. Provisional ballots, people can go in and say, oh, you know, I missed the registration deadline or I missed my address changed, and they’re allowed to cast a ballot in person. But that ballot then on the back end also has to be verified. So, I mean, the irony of a lot of the attacks on our slow process is that it exists to ensure integrity. It exists to insure that people are who they say they are, that they’re voting only once, that they are voting properly.
Shirley Weber [00:07:37] It’s unfortunate that people don’t believe we count fast. We do.
Marisa Lagos [00:07:38] You know, one of the biggest defenders of our election system has been the Secretary of State, Shirley Weber, who oversees this entire system. And she’s pretty bullish that what’s happening is working and it’s slow because election officials are being careful.
Shirley Weber [00:07:53] You want to be fast or you want to be accurate? I prefer, I choose accurate. We’ll be accurate and fast at the same time, but, and we’re always looking at new ways that we can improve our system, but I’m not going to toss out accurate in order to be fast.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:13] We’ll have more with KQED’s Marisa Lagos right after this break. By the way, if you like the deep dives into local news that we bring you here on the Bay, consider becoming a KQED member. We can’t do this work without you. Just go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. We’ll be right back.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:45] It sounds like we should all feel pretty confident then that we are getting the most accurate count possible, even though it’s slow. But I know your colleague, Guy Marzorati, talked with an election official in Yolo County about what it might take to speed up this process. What does he say about that?
Marisa Lagos [00:09:06] Jesse Salinas is the registrar of voters in Yolo County. He’s also head of the state association representing county election officials around the state.
Jesse Salinas [00:09:15] There’s multiple layers of review to make sure that anybody whose vote is being counted has been vetted properly and verified.
Marisa Lagos [00:09:25] And Yolo County is obviously not the biggest county around, but Jesse Salinas says that essentially resources would really help.
Jesse Salinas [00:09:33] If I had more space, if I have more staff, and I had more equipment to scan, I could pick up some of the speed. So yes, that would happen, right? So there’s a capacity issue and a resource issue.
Marisa Lagos [00:09:51] If the state or federal governments were willing to put more money into these county election offices, they could hire more staff. Maybe they could count ballots around the clock in the days after the election, not take a break, right? Because you can’t have people working like 24 hours a day. So, Jesse Salinas really feels like a lot of the pressure being put on county officials is not fair because we’ve essentially done everything we can to assure that more people can vote. But we haven’t actually given the government officials responsible for counting those votes enough resources to do so in a timely manner.
Jesse Salinas [00:10:26] People don’t understand why is it taking so long? Well, there’s a reason why. We’re not twiddling our thumbs. We are working hard every day for months and going into the election and, of course, on election night and then afterwards.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:45] On the one hand, Marisa, I feel like an, I mean, obviously I think everyone agrees that an accurate count and also increased voter access is a good thing. But on the other hand, this feels maybe not so good for voter confidence in our elections, especially at a time when the legitimacy of our elections are being questioned by Republicans. So how do I sort of make sense of that?
Marisa Lagos [00:11:11] I mean, I think what’s wild about all of this is that prior to 2020, when President Trump started promoting these baseless election conspiracies, the people most likely to vote by mail were Republicans. California historically saw rural counties, places where people had to drive a long way to get to a voting center. They saw elderly or older, especially white voters. Be the most likely to vote absentee. And so, to me, I think that speaks to the sort of ridiculous nature of this. I also just, on a personal level, wanna underscore the counterfactuals here. I mean, going back to 2020, how is it that the president believes that there was a vast Democratic conspiracy to throw the election to Joe Biden, but to give Congress to Republicans, right? Click. I mean, I can go on, but we’ve seen this over and over where it’s very much cherry-picking not just individual elections, but individual races.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:15] And I guess looking ahead to November, if I may, I know the House majority is on the line. These are races that could control Congress. And I have to imagine we’re probably going to hear more of the same, if not more, of these sort of baseless claims of voter fraud over our count.
Marisa Lagos [00:12:33] I am incredibly concerned for what the president could try to do. You know, you see in Los Angeles, the U.S. Acting attorney there, Bill Essayli, a former Republican member of the state assembly saying that they’re, you know, investigating voting in L.A. And getting into a fight over what information the county will provide. We’ve seen the Department of Justice under President Trump go to blue states and try to demand voter rolls and other information. We all still remember the president’s threats that he could deploy National Guard troops or ICE agents. You know, look, there’s not the resources for them to have ICE agents at every polling place. But I think even the sort of whisper of those types of threats could deter people from participating, and that’s a threat. Every time this type of rhetoric is out there, it does undermine people’s beliefs and it sort of stratifies us further. So we can both reject these baseless theories and stand by our very hardworking election officials who are, by the way, from both parties. And we also can demand more from our largely Democratic leaders in this state.
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