The Problem with Voting-Counting in California [Updated]
Spoiler: the problem isn't the vote-counting.
Let me cut to the chase: the main problem that California takes longer than other states to count all the votes and declare winners isn’t that California takes longer than other states. The problem is that Donald Trump and his allies, like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, lie about what it all means.
There is a secondary problem of general impatience from news junkies who want to know election results before they go to bed on election night.
There is, however, nothing inherently wrong, corrupt, anti-democratic, or really worthy of serious criticism for the way that California conducts its elections.
I will confess, had I designed the system, I likely would have required ballots to have been mailed earlier and arrive by election day, and I would prefer a process that was faster. But, I would note, none of that has anything to do with accuracy or democracy/legal legitimacy.
Put another way: I am not claiming that CA’s system is perfect, and I am willing to listen to reform suggestions. But I am also directly stating that there are no legitimate claims of fraud or inaccuracy. There is no evidence that any of this is anything other than what it appears, i.e., they take a while to count.
The core problem, therefore, with California is that Trump and others lie about what it all means.
That’s it. That’s the problem.
See, for example, this story from Axios: California’s “red mirage” feeds MAGA fraud frenzy which includes this:
There was a similar story on NPR this morning, and Tim Miller and JVL were complaining about it on the Bulwark podcast the other day. There are several such stories on Memeorandum as I type this.
Each of these stories has two things in common. First, they talk about how Trump and his allies lie about what CA’s slowness means. Second, none of them has any evidence that CA’s slowness is an actual problem, except that the slowness gives Trump and company an opening for lying.
Stop me if it isn’t obvious that the problem is Trump’s lying, not CA’s slowness. Further, I would note that Trump does not need CA’s slowness to, you know, lie about election results.
In terms of allies, here’s Mike Johnson:
It is amazing to think of all the things that Johnson has said he was unaware of when Trump was doing the indefensible, but all of a sudden, he “instinctively” knows something is rotten in California. This is, I would note, the Speaker of the House deliberately casting doubt on American democracy for petty partisan gain.
Here’s Ron DeSantis:
I refuse to believe that these guys don’t understand how all of this really works. Any given ballot box is not going to be normally distributed. If a box comes from a heavily Democratic precinct, there are going to be more Democratic than Republican votes in the box. Los Angeles is a heavily Democratic city. Math, the harshest of mistresses, dictates that in a Top Two primary, two Democrats is not a fantastical outcome (and BTW, the ballot is actually nonpartisan).
Also, This Just In! Bass is the incumbent mayor, and Nithya Raman is a member of the City Council. The ostensible Republican, Spencer Pratt, is described thusly at Ballotpedia:
Pratt received a B.A. in political science from the University of Southern California. He starred in the reality television shows The Hills, I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, Big Brother, and Marriage Boot Camp. Pratt was also a media entrepreneur and hummingbird hobbyist.
Color me shocked that two elected officials beat out the “media entrepreneur and hummingbird hobbyist.”
Here is how Pratt’s website (and he does use a hummingbird* as part of his logo) describes him:
Spencer first rose to international prominence as the architect of modern reality television, serving as a central figure on MTV’s iconic series The Hills.
Well, then.
Here’s a downloadable poster from said site:
Here are the final results:
BTW, LA County went roughly 65% for Harris and 32% for Trump in 2024. As such, the above numbers seem in line with past elections. I realize, BTW, that LA County is more than just the city of LA, but the county numbers give a rough proxy (and I would guess that the city is probably somewhat more Democratic than the county as a whole (but that is just a guess).
I realized that I wrote a version of this post back in 2022: “We Used to Know on Election Night!”
For the record, by the way, hummingbirds are cool.
UPDATE: I read Jonathan Bernstein’s latest, Undermining Democracy, after I wrote this.
From the piece:
The main thing I’d add to that is that people are tempted to blame California’s slow count for inviting claims of fraud, but that’s bunk. Trump claimed fraud in the very first election he contested, the 2016 Iowa caucuses, and pretty much every election since. Including elections he won. Count fast, count slow; vote by mail or in person; use machines or people to count, and Trump is going to claim fraud, often with the bulk of his party right there with him. Changing how the votes are counted will do absolutely nothing to change that.
Exactly.
Also,
Look: Donald Trump took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Undermining confidence in elections based on nothing at all is a form of undermining the Constitution. It’s that simple. Am I suggesting that these false claims could be part of a legitimate impeachment and removal? I am. And he’s not the only one. Speaker Johnson took an oath to defend the Constitution as well, and so did every yahoo Member of the House and Senator jumping on the phony fraud bandwagon.
Indeed.
See, also, Rick Hasen writing at MS Now: Trump’s latest ‘voter fraud’ claims may backfire on him in the fall.
I am less sanguine about the boy-who-cried-wolf of it all, but the piece is worth a read in any event.
And to add to those undermining democracy, here’s Representative Steve Scalise:
Shorter (but not by much) Mike Johnson: “That I don’t have any proof whatsoever just shows how deep the conspiracy goes.”
As I said in another thread, we used to ridicule people like that. And for good reason.
And now they’re running the country.
I understand this desire, but also think it surfaces additional problems. The easy deadline for voting is voting day. Trying to manage an “earlier” deadline requirement for mailed ballots would be sort of a nightmare. If someone mails their ballot in a week ahead of time, and it arrives the day after election day, right now that vote counts. That seems fair to me. The person voted before the election.
And most jurisdictions rightly–IMHO–use that as the dividing point. Did they vote before the election? Y/N. If Y=the vote counts.
Saying “well, it’s nice that you voted a week before the election, but for reasons unknown, your ballot was delayed so oops” is not only disenfranchising, it COULD lead to shenanigans. Election mail is tagged so that it’s handled promptly. Incentivizing ballot delay is…a bad idea.
That’s why authoritarian illiberal elections are far more efficient. The outcome is known before the ballots are printed.
If you aren’t a zealot, crank, or corrupt politician, you might see the careful counting of votes as a good thing. However, the impulse to scream “Fraud!” overcomes all morals and basic cognition.
@Jen:
I really have no strong views on this, to be clear.
But, isn’t the challenge essentially the same no matter what the cutoff date is? If you have to have your ballot mailed by Election Day or Election Day – 5 (or whatever), you still have to figure out which ballots missed the deadline and which didn’t, yes?
I realize that part of the problem is CA’s size, but I don’t think other VBM states have the same timeline issues.
I found one small use for LLMs. If I ask one “should I use an organic or an AI crew for the alien ship?” its generic, cliched answers help me to think of the problem because I have to type a cogent response. This often, not always, leads me to figure things out on my own.
Now, does this count as using AI to write a story? I will write every last word on the screen myself, after all. The LLM served as a sounding board. So, I judge it’s not using AI to actually write.
Commenter @becca once described Mike Johnson as “a professional Christian”. Which I liked a lot.
I think we can add to that, “professional conspiracy theorist”.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Sort of. I’m looking at this from a messaging perspective. It’s harder to layer in additional dates and have them “stick.” It’s particularly challenging when elections are held at different times, in differing jurisdictions, throughout the year (municipal elections, special elections, etc.).
Messaging that is clear and uniform (e.g., your ballot must be mailed before the election) is always going to have a higher compliance rate than messaging that is varied. A shifting date (your ballot must be mailed a week before the election) then builds in another layer of complexity not just for the voter, but also for the election officials.
I’m also somewhat concerned about election surprises or revelations that pop up in the in-between space, and the previously mentioned bag-o-ballots that is clearly marked red tag political mail that gets delayed by a day in an urban area…and so on.
The TL;DR — following one date is easier than following multiple dates.
They have been claiming voter fraud since at least when Bush was in office and he replaced a bunch state level attorneys in the DOJ(?) with the priority of looking for voter fraud. The hack in Kansas spent lots of money and time and didnt find any then Trump put him in charge of a committee to look for fraud and they didnt find any. But somehow they just know it’s out there somewhere.
Steve
@Kathy:
Whoops! Wrong thread. Sorry.
I don’t see anything improper in a rule or law that states mail in ballots must be postmarked by election day. After all, that’s the case for mail in tax returns, is it not? They have to be mailed on the April 15th. deadline.
Part of the big issue is El Taco’s tantrum from 2020 against mail in ballots. California has always taken a long time to count votes, because many mailed on election day arrive and are counted days later. If roughly equal numbers of Democratic and Republic voters mailed their ballots, there’s be no issue at all. Since most of the latter vote in person, their ballots get counted first, and early counts reflect more votes for their preferred candidates, which then get overtaken by the more numerous Democratic votes.
So, change voting habits for one party in order to be able to manufacture fraud allegations. That’s the gist of it.
Just in passing I’ll note that IIRC in 2000 FL counted military mail-in ballots postmarked after the election and some not postmarked, with credible allegations ballots had been solicited after election day and postmarking deliberately skipped. Gore’s team originally objected but then bowed to charges of not respecting the military.
Steven says, “Stop me if it isn’t obvious that the problem is Trump’s lying, not CA’s slowness. ” I would say this applies to many things. Obama tried hard to duck gay marriage as an issue, as did most national Ds. DEI in grade school was never a real thing. No national D is advocating open orders. These things blow up as D liabilities more because GOPs lie than because of anything Ds do.
@Jen:
Actually it is not. In AZ ballots must arrive by election day, so voters are advised to mail at least 6 days ahead.
This is not a problem because:
A) There are lots of drop boxes. You can always just hand carry to a drop box instead of mailing if you are late making up your mind.
B) You can check your ballot status online. If it has not been received by election day, just go to your polling place and vote in person.
I’d like the California Secretary of State to start suing people for slander. You can’t sue a sitting president, but Speaker of the House? Or the sitting governor of Florida? Absolutely.
Or bring back dueling, but as a society we decided to settle disputes in the courts rather than at 20 paces.
But there need to be consequences.
Another point is that California and Canada have roughly the same population. It’s yuge.
Anyway, I see the noise about voter fraud from Republicans as more projection: they’re planning to practice it themselves and want to both sides it.
I see two reasons for Republicans to push voter fraud narratives. First, it gives them cover to enact policies that suppress voting, in a way that gives them electoral advantage.
Second, it is a good counter to the idea that they just aren’t all that popular. They are! But the other side cheats!
Also, it is cover for cheating in the sense of “everyone cheats!”.
I mean, it’s possible that people could believe any or all of these.
Just a side note on Mike Johnson and his lawyerese (what I call weasel wording). He says “some things go so deep…” He doesn’t say this thing goes that deep. Just “some things”.
Also he says “everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong here”. This commits him to no statement of any factual substance whatsoever. “something is wrong” could be “Republicans are unpopular in LA”. The “everybody knows” is a marker of opinion, not statement of fact. But he’s not about to throw a wet blanket on things or queer the pitch.
Which has put him on the side of anti-democracy. This makes far more objectionable, to my mind, than Robert E. Lee. Far more.
@mistermix:
I think it was Lawrence O’Donnell who observed last night that on election day Alabama set out to open and count like 150 thousand mail-in ballots, California had 13 million.
@drj:
Or: “The fact that I have absolutely no proof of fraud proves there’s fraud.”
@charontwo:
Yep, I know my parents are in AZ. Most states have a “by election day” deadline, but a substantial portion of the US population are located in states that have “postmarked by” deadlines (CA, TX, NY, and IL all have “postmarked by” deadlines.)
Arizona ranked 7th out of 10 western states in voter turnout in 2024. While many, many factors go into turnout rates, having an effective voting deadline that is nearly a week ahead of voting day likely has some impact.
I’m coming at this from a messaging standpoint. It absolutely can be annoying–and confusing–to voters to have multiple dates/deadlines.
ETA: Also, the scenario I was envisioning is not a “voters are ADVISED to mail ballots” in advance, but “voters MUST mail ballots by xyz date.” One has voting DAY as the deadline, the other requires checking each postmark. Slight difference in what we are each talking about.