Welcome to a new chapter for the Votebeat national newsletter. I’m Dion Nissenbaum, Votebeat’s first senior national reporter, and I’ll be taking the lead most weeks in providing you with the most interesting, informative, and sometimes surreal stories on elections and voting. |
I come to Votebeat after spending much of my journalism career based overseas in Beirut, Jerusalem, Kabul, Istanbul, and Brussels, most of the time with the Wall Street Journal. I also spent several years in Washington covering the Pentagon, State Department, and White House. |
What brought me to Votebeat after a career covering wars, conflict, and foreign policy? Voting and elections in America have become one of the most significant issues for this country. We are inundated with persistent allegations that U.S. elections are riddled with fraud and ripe for meddling, casting doubt on one of the central pillars of American democracy. Votebeat has emerged as a go-to source for reliable, insightful, and well-sourced reporting on elections. |
I have seen first-hand how tenuous any country’s grip on stability can be. I was in Istanbul in July 2016 when elements of the Turkish military tried to stage a coup, leading to a remarkable popular uprising by supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who helped to suppress the attempted overthrow in a matter of hours. I was in the Gaza Strip when Hamas militants overthrew the Palestinian Authority in 2007, leading to decades of instability that continue to reverberate in the Middle East to this day. I was in Beirut in the summer of 2019 when thousands of Lebanese protesters from across the political spectrum took to the streets for months of demonstrations against political corruption that brought down the government. |
Each instance served as a reminder of just how fragile democracy can be and how quickly stability can be undermined. With the U.S. electoral system facing unprecedented strains, accurate, fair, nuanced reporting is going to be essential to everyone in the years ahead. To me, it’s one of the most important issues for America. |
My first week helming the newsletter dovetails with a closely watched primary in California, the state where I started my journalism career covering politics and government. As one might have expected, California (led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat) quickly ended up in President Donald Trump’s crosshairs. |
California’s ‘Pig in a Python’ Problem: |
Trump, a Republican, quickly took to social media after the Tuesday election to accuse Democrats in late-night posts of trying to steal the election, pointing to the state’s long timeline for counting votes and large share of mail-in ballots. He asserted that the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles was investigating. On Friday, Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor for Los Angeles, said he is overseeing “multiple election fraud investigations” in California. |
“We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent,” he wrote on X. “My office will not look the other way. We will investigate and prosecute. Every legal vote deserves to be counted. Every illegal vote cancels one out.” For their part, multiple California officials said — again — that the state’s long counting time doesn’t mean anything is wrong. |
Why does it take so long for California to count votes and declare winners? The question has dogged the Golden State for years and drawn additional scrutiny because of a partisan divide in voting methods. Republicans have long lamented that their candidates lead in early results and watch their advantage vanish as mail-in ballots are counted in the days and weeks after Election Day. But while Republicans claim this is evidence of fraud, it actually reflects the fact that Republicans are more likely to vote in person and Democrats more likely to vote by mail — meaning more Democratic votes get counted later in the process. |
By Friday afternoon, California voters still didn’t know which candidates for governor and Los Angeles mayor would be on the November ballot. |
California is one of eight states that sends mail-in ballots to all registered voters. And a majority of California voters — nearly 90% in last year’s special election — use them. The Catch-22 is that it takes elections officials a lot longer to verify mail-in ballots than it takes to confirm in-person voting, creating long delays while they make sure there is no fraud. |
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And in California, a large number of voters drop off their mail-in ballots on or right before Election Day, creating a huge bottleneck of ballots that have to go through a signature check and other steps to make sure the vote can be counted. |
Kim Alexander, founder and president of the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group, refers to it as the “pig in the python” problem. |
“The truth is we are taking extra steps to ensure the voting process is accessible and the vote count is accurate and reliable, and that’s why it takes a long time,” said Alexander. |
Delays are compounded by state laws that allow election officials to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive up to seven days later, and a lengthy process that requires counties to inform voters if there are problems with their mail-in ballots — such as missing signatures — that they usually have several weeks to fix. |
Jesse Salinas, the voter registrar, assessor, and clerk-recorder of California’s Yolo County who serves as president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials, said there is a tradeoff between speed and security. |
“If you want speed, not as many people’s votes are going to be counted that could legitimately be counted,” he said. “So this tension exists between accessibility and speed.” |
California leaders admit there is a problem. “We wish the votes were counted faster, too,” Newsom wrote on social media. |
Two decades ago, California used to count 80% of its ballots within the first two days after an election, according to a California Voter Foundation analysis. That fell to 50% in 2022. The state has gone some ways toward reversing the decline, with the figure rising to 66% in November 2024. |
More resources could speed things up |
One unique factor for California is its size. California is home to 23 million registered voters, far more than any other state. (Texas comes closest, with about 18.7 million registered voters.) |
Last year, Newsom signed a law that requires California counties to count most votes within 13 days of the election. This is the first election where we will see whether that speeds things up. Counties can ask for an extension, and they still have up to 30 days to certify the results, so the law only goes so far. |
Local election officials and voter advocates say another major issue is funding, and the state doesn’t provide counties with the money they need to speed up counting. |
“If I have more space, more equipment, and more staffing, things could be done quicker,” Salinas said. |
Voting rights advocates like Alexander worry that the long vote counts, and the persistent criticism coming from the White House and others, are taking a toll on American confidence in the electoral system. One recent study found that Americans’ trust in elections fell from about 67% to 60% when people heard about unexplained delays in results. Another study found that voter trust that votes will be accurately counted in the upcoming election fell from 77% in 2024 to 60% this year. |
“I do see voter confidence eroding and the long vote count doesn’t help restore it,” said Alexander. “Even people who aren’t buying into those myths and disinformation, people who trust the process, ask why we have to wait so long for the vote count. It allows lies to spread and conspiracy theories to grow, and we need to minimize the opportunity for nefarious actors to cast doubt on the reliability of our results.” |
Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy in California, challenged the narrative that California has a problem and suggested that people should look at the issue from a different perspective. |
“We don’t have a vote counting problem. We have a lot of votes,” she said. |
Along with more money for counties and expanded voter education efforts, Romero suggested steps to shorten the California timeline for certifying results. |
“Anything structurally will be considered voter suppression by voters,” she said, “and you have to think about weighing the size of the problem that you’re trying to fix.” |
Votebeat Brunch: More with Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation |
Every week the Votebeat national newsletter will aim to sit down with a key voting and elections personality to chew over the latest twists and turns in this often confusing and surreal area. This week we are joined by Kim Alexander, founder and president of the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group focused on improving elections and voter access. |
How do you think this week’s California primary went? |
From what I can tell, it was a pretty smooth election. There were a couple of instances of problems, with ICE officers spotted outside a Ventura County voting center, for example, and some counties implementing procedures that were not explicitly spelled out in the law, such as asking voters for their birthdates when checking them in for in-person voting. The most alarming thing that happened this election was a Los Angeles ballot box being set on fire and a vote center in Long Beach that was vandalized. But, overall, I think things went pretty smoothly. |
California is one of only two states to have some form of a so-called “jungle primary” where the top two vote getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election. The primary this year created some angst for Democrats because of fears that their candidates running for governor could split the vote and two Republicans could end up on the November ballot. That didn’t happen. But what do you think of this system? |
The policy of the California Voter Foundation is to not take positions on ballot initiatives, so we didn’t take a position on it when it was put on the ballot in 2010. I think it has its advantages and disadvantages from a voter’s perspective. The intent was to promote moderation and have a system where a candidate would potentially appeal to a wider array of voters and not just their own party. The downside is you can end up with a race where there are two candidates of the same party, so voters of other parties might feel left out. I do like the Alaska process, where the top four candidates advance to a ranked-choice general election. |
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling any time that could severely restrict California’s ability to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day but received seven days later. Is California prepared for the possibility? |
I don’t think it’s known what would happen. It’s going to be up to our Legislature to act quickly. It is possible the ruling won’t apply to primaries, state, or local elections, so you could end up with a bifurcated vote counting process. Option one is that we no longer have a grace period to accept ballots. Option two is that you have a bifurcated system of counting votes where, in federal contests, only votes received by Election Day are counted while, in state and local contests, votes received during the grace period on ballots postmarked by Election Day are counted. |
Registrars I have asked about this hope it is option one because they think option two would be very difficult to administer. From a voter advocacy perspective, option two is better for voters. Maryland, I understand, is expected to go with option two if the Supreme Court strikes down mail ballot grace periods. |
What should we expect from California in the coming week? |
Election staff are facing extreme pressure right now. Everybody is breathing down their necks. When are we going to get the results? We are asking more of our elections officials and not providing them with the support they need to meet expectations. That’s frustrating. We have the most accessible voting process in the country and laws that protect voters and those protections and access methods add time to our vote count. We get criticized for providing those protections that add time to our vote count, and if the state started providing counties with the resources they need, then it would help accelerate the vote count. But I’m past the point of explaining why it takes a long time to count California’s ballots and prefer to focus on what we can do to speed up the process while retaining access, accuracy, and security, and give voters a more satisfying election experience. |
