Last Minute Voter Questions as Polls Open Across California

Here are the morning’s top stories on Tuesday, November 3, 2026

• It’s election day and polls are now open across the state. If you haven’t had a chance to cast your ballot yet and are planning to do so today, we’ve got all the information you need. 
• The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s request to block California from processing thousands of ballots. 
• A coalition of community groups in California is standing ready to protect voters’ rights at the polls. It’s because of increasing worries that the Trump administration will interfere with the election.

It’s election day and that means for California voters who want to cast their ballot but haven’t had a chance to yet, the deadline is finally here. So what should you know before heading to the polls or dropping off your ballot?

“If you’re voting on election day, the best thing you can do is take your ballot to an official drop box or voting site or your county election office and turn it in, in person,” said Kim Alexander, founder of the California Voter Foundation. “If you have to use the mail, you have no other choice, we advise that you take it into a post office and ask a staff member to hand cancel the ballot so that your ballot will be postmarked by election day. It has to have an election day postmark on it in order to be counted.”

Polling locations are open until 8 p.m. And if you think you have a mistake on your ballot? “It depends what kind of mistake. We get a lot of questions from voters about, I did this on my ballot, I filled out the wrong choice or I signed the wrong place on the envelope,” Alexander said. “One of the problems that voters sometimes have with vote by mail ballots is they forget to sign their envelope or their signature doesn’t sufficiently match their signature on file. And so many voters worry about that. If that’s you, you can sign up for ballot tracking on the secretary of state’s website. And if you did make a mistake with your signature, if it doesn’t look like your signature on file or you forgot to sign your envelope, your county will contact you and give you a chance to correct that. So that’s a great safety protection for voters to make sure they’re not disqualified from voting because of a technical glitch like that.”

On the eve of Election Day, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a last-minute legal challenge from the Trump administration that would have forced California to not count over 20,000 ballots that the administration had flagged as being cast by possible noncitizens. None of the judges dissented, and no explanation was provided.

The ruling came after U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter issued a blistering ruling last week declaring that the Trump administration’s efforts were likely unconstitutional.

“Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” wrote Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.

The Trump administration immediately appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel on the appellate court for the second time in a week rejected the administration’s claims.

In mid-October, the Trump administration sent a letter to California’s secretary of state and Los Angeles County election officials demanding they set aside the 20,000 ballots. The letter demanded the ballots not be counted until the voters’ citizenship can be verified. But state and local officials have contended the list is far from accurate. The UCLA Voting Rights Project submitted a brief to a federal court saying its data scientists found that 42% of the 20,000 names were “not anywhere to be found on the current California voter file.” The analysis also found that thousands of U.S. citizens appear to be flagged as ineligible to vote on the government’s list.

We Are California’s “Can’t Stop California Campaign” is all about voter mobilization and election protection. “We do see that people are upset with how the climate is right now. They are motivated to vote because they are sick of increased prices for gas and groceries,” said Star-Venus Holmes, a community organizer with the Bay Area-based group Filipino Advocates for Justice.

We Are California has also been preparing the Neighborhood Voter Protection program. Organizers said they’ve trained close to 3,000 people to defend against any type of interference at the ballot box. That includes a know your rights campaign, how to identify voter intimidation and how to safely identify and report possible incidents.

Daisy Maxion, also with Filipino Advocates for Justice, went through the training. “It was actually really helpful to not only know your rights as a voter, but how are you able to, in compliance, also protect other people’s rights to vote as well,” she said.

Volunteers are expected to canvas polling sites across the state on election day.