Fifty-eight county election offices run California’s statewide elections. County registrars manage registration, mail-in ballots, vote centers, vote counting, and certification. The California secretary of state sets standards, maintains the statewide voter database, and certifies statewide results.
This is why voters’ experiences can differ by county and why it may take years for statewide changes to fully take effect at the county level.
Why does everyone get a ballot in the mail?
Since 2021, state law (AB 37) requires every active registered voter to be mailed a ballot about 29 days before each election. In effect, the pandemic-era experiment of mass mail-in voting became permanent.
As a result, more than 80 percent of California ballots are now cast by mail, among the highest share in the nation. Voters can return their ballot by mail, at a drop box, or at any vote center. They can also decline to use the mailed ballot and vote in person instead.
How do officials know a mail-in ballot is legitimate?
Each ballot includes a barcode to ensure that it cannot be counted twice. This also allows voters to follow their ballot through the submission process using the secretary of state’s Where’s My Ballot system.
Voter identification of mail-in ballots is currently conducted through signature verification. The signature on each returned ballot is compared against signatures that are part of the voter file from previous ballots and election registration.
Mismatched or missing signatures trigger a legally required notice sent to the voter to provide them with an opportunity to “cure” the ballot by submitting a signed statement, under penalty of perjury, affirming that the voter returned it. Election officials compare that signature with those in the voter’s record. Uncured ballots are not counted.
While California does not currently require any identification to be submitted with a mail-in ballot, Proposition 39, the “Voter Identification, Citizenship Verification, and Registered Voter List Administration Initiative,” would require voters to present a government-issued ID for in-person voting or, for mail-in voting, provide the last four digits of an identifying number from a government-issued ID that the voter selected in their voter registration.
Why does vote counting take weeks?
Three deliberate voting policy design choices affect the speed of California’s vote certification.
Mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day are counted if they are received by the voter’s county elections office within seven days after Election Day. This factor, combined with the increased number of mail-in ballots, means that a substantial number of valid ballots are still arriving even after other states have certified their vote.
Additionally, confirming voter identification via signature cure and verifying eligibility of conditional, or same-day, registration ballots takes time, sometimes weeks, to resolve.
Lastly, counties are allotted 30 days to conduct their canvass of auditing, reconciling, and counting every eligible ballot. The secretary of state has another eight days after this to certify the statewide results.
States that finish their counts on election night, Florida for example, front-load ballot processing and cut off late-arriving ballots. California chose instead to prioritize inclusion over speed. The slowness of vote certification is a consequence of deliberately chosen policy, not incompetence.
Could California count faster without excluding anyone?
There are ways that California could report election results faster. Some options include conducting earlier processing of mail-in ballots, increasing automation to speed up ballot curing, and mandating faster reporting.
Inclusionary policies, such as the week-long window to receive mail-in ballots after the election and the extended ballot curing process, impose substantial time costs. Additionally, anything that adds verification steps, like Proposition 39’s voter identification requirements, adds to the time cost.
Holding everything else constant, more verification will result in slower ballot counts. No design can maximize speed, inclusion, and verification simultaneously. Each state picks, at best, two of those three factors to prioritize.
What is the top-two primary?
Since voters approved Proposition 14 in 2010, all candidates for state and US congressional offices run on one June primary ballot. The top two finishers in each race, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the November election.
That is why some general elections can feature two Democrats or two Republicans on the ballot for these offices. The proponents of this system argue that it rewards moderate candidates, though political scientists find the effect small and hard to separate from California’s simultaneous redistricting reform. See research by McGhee and Shor.
Presidential primaries are still conducted on a party basis.
