In the wake of a painfully slow June vote count in California that led to unfounded claims of election irregularities, a voter watchdog group Monday recommended the state and counties carry out a number of voting reforms that could speed up tabulations. Not all of them, however, are likely to happen before November.
The California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit group with a mission is to improve the election process for voters, issued a report pushing for several changes to the ballot signature curing process: the state, it said, should shorten the ballot envelope signature curing timeline from 22 to 14 days, expand voter access to and awareness of electronic ballot signature curing and have the state collect and publish comprehensive signature curing data.
The group also urged the state to enable most close races to be “called” by the Friday after Election Day and let counties, in extremely close contests, prioritize counting those ballots first. The state, it said, should also provide local election offices with additional funding to enable them to speed up ballot processing, improve its public reporting of unofficial election results with clearer terminology and real-time updates, and inform voters they can help by returning vote-by-mail ballots earlier or voting in person.
“California doesn’t have to choose between an accessible, secure election system and timely results,” Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said in a statement. “Our research shows we can combat the long vote count while preserving — and in some cases strengthening — the protections that make California elections accessible and trustworthy.”
Alexander told The Times that two of the California Voter Foundation’s 10 recommendations — providing election officials with more funding and informing voters that they can help by voting earlier or in person — are already underway.
Four more recommendations — expanding voter access to and awareness of electronic ballot signature curing, acquiring signature curing data, prioritizing close races to be counted first, and improving public reporting of unofficial results — she said could be implemented by November. (Prioritizing close races to be counted first is not a feasible change at the state level, Alexander said, but county boards of supervisors could request it of their election offices before November.)
Some of the group’s key recommendations are unlikely to take place before November. Shortening the ballot curing window, Alexander said, would likely require a broader discussion with election stakeholders and is contingent on there being broad voter access to electronic signature curing options, which are not in place yet.
Enabling most close races to be “called” by the Friday after Election Day by providing more precise data on unprocessed ballots in those contests, Alexander said, is also not likely to happen by November. Many local election officials oppose the idea, she said, because it takes away from time they could be spending processing ballots.
“We included it to begin the discussion,” Alexander said, noting that for some counties making precise data available on unprocessed ballots would not be as heavy a lift because they already sort their ballots by precinct before processing.
After the June primary election, California elections officials were criticized for taking about a week to determine which gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral candidates would advance to November’s runoff. The delays caused many to question why California, which has instituted a series of reforms in recent years designed to make voting easier and safer, lags behind other states in counting results.
The slow count was used by some on the right —including President Trump — to sow unfounded doubts about the results.
According to the report, the share of California’s ballots counted within two days of Election Day dropped from 81% in 2004 to 66% in 2024, with a slight uptick between 2022 and 2024.
Even if California follows its recommendations, the report said, the state will likely take longer than other states to count election results, because of its size and steps it has taken in recent years to make voting more accessible and secure. “However,” it said, “aiming to return to a status where the outcomes of most contests are known by the end of Election Week is a realistic goal.”
Voters can also help speed up the election count, the report said, by voting in person or returning vote-by-mail ballots earlier — ideally the Saturday before the election.
“Every voter has a role to play in accelerating the voter count,” Alexander told The Times.
“Our advice is if you want to take as much time as possible, turn in your ballot at a voting site on election day,” she said, noting in the majority of counties voters can cast a mail-in ballot as an in-person ballot. “If they can take the extra time to also cast it as an in-person ballot, that’s even better.”
Under the current system, every California voter receives a mail-in ballot and it is counted as long as the envelope is postmarked by Election Day and it arrives at an election office within seven days of that date.
Voters who want to vote by mail should not depend too much on the seven day grace period, Alexander said. She urged voters to mail their ballot a week before election day or take it to a post office and ask for it to be hand postmarked to avoid running the risk of the ballot not getting postmarked by election day,
Data from the Secretary of State’s office show that 148,241mail-in ballots were rejected in this year’s June primary election, equivalent to 1.73% of all mail ballots received. The largest share of rejected mail ballots — 93,479 ballots — were rejected because the ballot was not received on time. An additional 43,977 ballots were rejected because they had a non-matching signature.
Alexander noted that in December 2025, the U.S. Postal Service added a new section to its Domestic Mail Manual, noting that a postmark’s date “does not inherently or necessarily align with the date on which the Postal Service first accepted possession of the mailpiece.” This “lack of alignment,” it noted, “has and will become more common” due to recent service changes.
“The public can no longer assume that a piece of mail dropped in a mailbox before collection time on a specific day will be postmarked that same day,” Alexander said. “If you’re accustomed to taking advantage of the grace period and dropping off your ballot in the mailbox on election day, you stand a good chance of your ballot not getting postmarked by election day.”
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