California’s slow vote count sows doubt. Here’s how one group is trying to fix that

California has a notoriously slow ballot counting process — one that Kim Alexander describes as “a pig in the python.”

“This giant wad of ballots that all arrive at once, that all have to move through the process, and you can’t speed it up,” said Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation. “You have to do every single step, otherwise you lose the integrity of the process.”

To help voters understand and trust that process, Alexander’s group launched a tracker this election that is monitoring the vote count in California’s close contests between Election Day and certification of county results.

Dubbed the Close Count Transparency Project, the tracker — which debuted as a pilot program in 2022 — provides daily updates on the results of 11 competitive U.S. House races and seven state legislative races, as well as the statewide vote count status. The tool tracks candidates’ vote share, votes counted and the number of unprocessed ballots in each county the districts cover.

As of late Tuesday, an estimated 570,500 ballots statewide were yet to be counted, according to the Secretary of State’s office. More than 126,000 ballots needed to be “cured” — they had been rejected for missing or mismatched signatures and voters have time to submit a form to verify their signatures.

A total of eight key contests remained uncalled by the Associated Press as of late Tuesday, including two congressional races, five legislative races and one statewide ballot measure. (CalMatters and other news outlets use AP to declare winners while the vote count is ongoing.)

By making the vote count more transparent, the close contest tracker aims to inoculate against unfounded conspiracy theories about election fraud in California, Alexander said.

Some prominent conservatives, including GOP U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, are spreading unproven claims that Democrats are “stealing” the 45th Congressional District race in Southern California, where Democrat Derek Tran is leading by a razor-thin margin over Republican Rep. Michelle Steel after trailing her for days.

“We wanted to create a record of where the vote count stood each day, so that if someone came along later and said, ‘Something hinky is going on here,’ there would be a reliable source of information people could turn to to see how the vote count evolved over time,” Alexander said.

The tracker also comes as frustration about the lengthy process grows in California. State Assemblymember Joe Patterson, a Rocklin Republican, called the procedure “dumb” on social media, arguing that winners of state legislative races will be sworn in Dec. 2, before the results are certified by the Secretary of State. The lengthy process “sows distrust” in the state’s election system, he told KCRA.

The state Assembly and Senate already held a joint freshman orientation last week for incoming lawmakers, while the five legislative races remain too close to call, Assembly Republicans spokesperson Jim Stanley confirmed to CalMatters.

“It’s a real problem for incoming lawmakers if they miss out on that,” Alexander said.

Why it takes so long to count — and how to speed it up

While voters and campaigns want to see results sooner, it is particularly challenging in California, Alexander said.

The state is home to more than 22 million registered voters, according to the state Secretary of State’s office. As of Tuesday afternoon, a total of 15 million ballots had been counted — a number bigger than the populations of 46 other states, Census data shows.

California has also made it easier for voters to cast their ballots in recent years. A 2021 law made universal vote-by-mail permanent in California, meaning every registered voter receives a mail-in ballot roughly a month before Election Day and the ballots are counted as long as they arrive at county elections offices within seven days after Election Day. In the March primary, almost 90% of all voters voted by mail, according to the Secretary of State.

The widespread use of vote-by-mail slows down the vote count, Alexander said, because they take longer to process.

“We have to open the envelopes, we have to verify the signature, and all of those things before we can actually accept that ballot,” said Secretary of State Shirley Weber in a press conference last week.

Additionally, election officials have to first complete counting mail-in ballots before they move onto ballots cast by voters who register the same day they voted to make sure no voter votes twice, said Jesse Salinas, president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials and clerk-recorder in Yolo County. The number of same-day registered voters has grown over the years, further slowing down the vote count, he said.

But the slow vote count is also because races are closer than more than a decade ago, Alexander said. The state’s independent redistricting commission drew more competitive districts after the 2020 Census, she said, and the top-two primary process was designed to boost candidates who could appeal to a broader range of voters in the general election.

Between 2002 and 2010, before voters approved the independent redistricting commission, there was an average of one or two close congressional races per general election, Alexander said. But following the 2011 redistricting and the 2012 adoption of the top-two primary, there was an average of five close contests per election cycle, she said.

“People would be less patient with our long vote count if we had more decisive victories, but we don’t,” she said.

Still, county election officials could benefit from more staffing and funding for better equipment, Alexander said. Kern County, for example, has acquired high-speed ballot scanners to tabulate votes faster, she said. As of Tuesday, Kern had processed nearly 280,000 ballots and had only about 8,500 to go.

The state could also benefit from spending big on voter outreach, urging voters to mail in their ballots sooner, which would help county officials pre-process more ballots and reduce the workload post-election, Alexander said.

But more importantly, she said, the state should allow voters to opt out of vote-by-mail if they want, although she acknowledged that under current law, voters have the option to cast the ballot they received in the mail in person instead.

“A lot of people don’t want to vote by mail, and then you are stuck with this ballot, and that confuses voters,” she said.