An infusion of money could help accelerate California’s notoriously slow process for counting votes in time for the November election.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic state lawmakers agreed to spend an additional $40 million toward producing election results faster as part of the annual state budget they are approving this week. The funding includes $29 million for more county elections staff and equipment upgrades, and $10 million for a publicity campaign to inform voters that returning their ballots before Election Day can speed up the count.
But don’t expect results in close races to be reported on election night, Nov. 3. A vast majority of California voters use mail ballots, which are labor intensive to process and will still challenge even the best equipped county offices. The state also counts ballots that arrive within seven days as long as they are postmarked by Election Day, an approach that was upheld Monday by the Supreme Court despite a push by the Trump administration to invalidate a Mississippi law similar to the one in California.
Still, experts said, the new funding should help California determine results within five days of the election. In this month’s primary election, it took six days to determine the results of the Los Angeles mayor’s race and seven to call the governor’s race. In 2024, it took three weeks to determine the winner in California’s closest House races.
California’s slow counting process has made the state the target of criticism across the nation and vulnerable to unfounded accusations that fraudulent ballots are being added late to change an election’s outcome.
Democratic politicians in California have said the state’s process is designed to encourage maximum voter participation and an accurate count, but they acknowledge that the slow pace allows disinformation to fester. As part of the budget increase, the state will spend $750,000 to combat misinformation.
The election spending is one sliver of a $351.7 billion state budget that lawmakers are expected to send to Mr. Newsom on Monday evening. Election reform advocates had pushed for $90 million to improve elections but said the $40 million allocation should help.
California has made mail ballots the standard way for voters to participate in elections. But ballots that arrive in envelopes are cumbersome to process, and county offices are ill-equipped to quickly handle the glut of them that are turned in on Election Day. Before they can tally the votes, election officials must verify voters’ signatures, open the envelopes and inspect ballots for damage or irregularities.
If more voters submit their ballots early in the monthlong voting period, officials can process them sooner and have them tallied on election night, leading to faster results.
Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, said she was optimistic that a campaign to inform voters about the benefits of turning in their ballots early could help speed up the count in November.
“Voters want to see more timely results, too, and I think if we let them know that they can play a role in achieving that, many would,” she said.
Another issue is that some counties lack money to hire enough workers or buy better equipment that would allow them to process ballots more quickly. Ben Gips, who works on state policy issues for Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, said that even if it is too late for some counties to order new equipment for the November election, they should be able to hire more staff to handle manual tasks.
Some of California’s biggest battleground House races involve voters in rural parts of the state. Mr. Gips said that small counties, in particular, have struggled to invest in hiring and equipment upgrades.
In Sacramento County, a larger metro area where two competitive House races are playing out this year, election officials said it was too soon to determine whether the new funding would make a difference because they didn’t know how much they would receive.
“If Sacramento County received enough funding to purchase additional equipment, our processing times may be reduced,” Ken Casparis, a county spokesman, said in a statement.
Before the primary, the county bought processing equipment that helped officials complete their counting a week ahead of schedule, he said. Still, there is only so much they can speed things up.
“The vast majority of our voters choose to vote by mail,” Mr. Casparis said. “And those ballots just take longer to process.”
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