A decade into the Trump era of American politics, everyone is well aware of what happens when opportunities are presented for conspiracy theories to spread. California’s slow count is one of those opportunities.
It can be described in a few different ways.
- A trade-off: The state increased accessibility by giving everyone a mail-in ballot, meaning a slower process that ensures both security and ample participation. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the universal mail-in voting option increases voter participation by four percent.
- A red mirage: Democratic-leaning voters are more likely to cast mail-in ballots and cast them late, meaning the results fairly consistently favor Republicans in the early numbers on election night.
- Business as usual: California has taken a long time to count votes for as long as I can remember, though it has taken longer since the expansion of mail-in voting during the pandemic.
The slow count isn’t just about mail-in voting deadlines that stretch a week after Election Day. I talked to multiple voters who put their ballots in drop boxes at voting centers before polls closed last Tuesday, avoiding any postal delays, but they didn’t get confirmation until as late as Saturday that their vote had been received.
That’s unsettling as you’re watching a close race with such high stakes.
It’s also a choice.
More funding could go into staffing and other resources to speed up the count. Vote counting centers could be staffed 24/7 instead of stopping late on election night and continuing at daybreak. Updates on results could be provided more than once a day, which puts more attention on each “drop,” a term that does nothing to tamp down conspiracy theories.
We don’t need to count 100% of the votes right away. The ballots that arrive in the mail last aren’t necessarily going to determine the outcome, but the votes that are submitted by Election Day could be counted more quickly to make the outcomes of high-profile races clearer earlier.
This is a test run for November. If Republicans do better than expected in races for Congress, the balance of power could hang on a few districts in California. In 2022, it took eight days to figure out that Republican Mike Garcia won California’s 27th District, giving the GOP a majority.
But the rules that govern California elections could be different by the midterms.
The Supreme Court will soon decide a case that could require all ballots to be received — not just postmarked — by Election Day in all 50 states.
That could reduce participation by California voters.
Based on the voter experiences I heard over the last week, it also may not speed up the count that much.
