California’s slow – California’s decades-long push for easy voting and strong safeguards has made results drag on in tight races—most recently the gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral contests—while misinformation spreads as days stretch into weeks. Election experts say the dela
For many Californians, the wait has started to feel less like patience and more like a test of faith. In recent primaries. it took about a week to determine which gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral candidates would advance to November’s runoff after hotly contested races. In earlier years, tight U.S. House and state Senate seats have taken even longer.
In the middle of that extended timeline, a familiar political storm has churned. Unsupported conspiracies about election fraud have circulated on social media—at times pushed by top political leaders—and some people now fear California’s slow vote count is turning into a liability rather than a trade-off.
Kim Alexander. president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation. has become one of the most visible advocates for accelerating California’s count. “We’ve allowed the long count to be normalized, … but that doesn’t mean it’s normal,” Alexander said. “There’s no question that voter confidence is eroding.”.
Election officials and nonpartisan groups make clear that a slower count does not signal fraud. Voter fraud remains extremely rare in the U.S. and there has been no evidence of such issues in California’s latest primary count. Still. studies have found voter trust slides when results lag. and this primary showed how disinformation can gain traction the longer the contest stretches—especially as lead changes move around.
That dynamic played out in the Los Angeles mayoral race. Reality TV personality Spencer Pratt moved slowly down from an initial second-place ranking. and later batches of votes bumped him from the runoff. The shift triggered a wave of online hysteria: claims of so-called corruption and vote dumping. misinformed examples of alleged fraud. and right-wing disinformation campaigns.
If there’s frustration inside the debate. there is also a stubborn reality: making substantial changes before November would be difficult. California is deep blue, and Democrats tend to resist limits to voter access. David Becker, the executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, urged restraint while still pushing for improvements. “We should never drive policy based on conspiracy theories and lies,” Becker said. “That said, are there things California can do?”.
A key part of the delay is the sheer volume of late-arriving ballots. California has roughly one-eighth of the U.S. population. and when a large share of voters mail or drop off vote-by-mail ballots on or just before election day—as they tend to—election workers face a backlog. Alexander described it as the “pig in the python” effect: a major pileup of labor-intensive ballots to process in a state that already handles the largest-volume ballot counts.
Becker said verification is not a quick mechanical step. While verification occurs simultaneously during in-person voting. California requires election workers to confirm a voter’s registration status. verify each voter’s signature. and ensure each voter did not vote elsewhere for each vote-by-mail ballot. Becker called it an “intensively human process” that cannot be sped through—but he argued it could be spread out by getting more ballots in earlier.
“It is a lot easier to report results out faster when ballots come in sooner,” Becker said.
Some adjustments could help, but experts say they often come with trade-offs. Altering the process enough to ease the bottleneck would likely mean other changes. such as earlier deadlines to turn in certain ballots or more time-consuming ballot drop-offs—moves that could discourage some voters from showing up. Mail-in voting, after all, has become the dominant method. More than 80% of voters have used vote-by-mail in every election since 2020.
California didn’t arrive at its system overnight. Since the turn of the millennium. the state has expanded voter access by allowing more options for when and how ballots can be cast while also strengthening election safeguards—an approach the secretary of state’s office describes as “the strongest voting security standards in the country.” The reforms include same-day voter registration. more early voting options. the shift from neighborhood-specific polling places to vote centers. and—most notably—universal vote-by-mail.
In 2021, California required that all registered voters be mailed their ballot. Those ballots can be mailed back, returned to a secure drop box or vote center, or ignored if a voter opts to vote in person.
This year’s crowded field also mattered. Many Democratic voters waited to turn in their ballots due to the crowded pool of gubernatorial candidates, a reality election watchdogs and party officials warned could make close races take days if not weeks to call.
But even warnings didn’t prevent the backlash once the process unfolded in extremely tight contests for California governor and Los Angeles mayor. Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Los Angeles County Republican Party, said the messaging didn’t land. “None of the optics are good,” Hoge complained. “None of this is designed to inspire confidence.”.
As Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office tried to dispel misinformation about California’s ballot tabulation process, its statement included a line that undercut the effort even as it tried to set the record straight: “For the record: we wish the votes were counted faster, too.”
Alexander argued that speed wouldn’t just help public confidence. He said faster counts could reduce harassment of election workers and help newly elected candidates step into their roles sooner. It would also eliminate the long limbo period for the losing candidate. “We can get it right and do it faster, and we should,” Alexander said.
One potential step is a 2023 law that allowed counties to let voters cast a vote-by-mail ballot as an in-person ballot by submitting it without an envelope and signing for it at a vote center. which reduces the verification process required by election workers. Alexander said about half of California counties have adopted some option of this expedited process. sometimes described as “Sign. scan and go!” or the “naked ballot” option. More widespread implementation, he said, could speed up the count.
Los Angeles County, which processes more ballots than many states, has not yet implemented that time-saving option.
California also allows ballots, if postmarked by election day, to be accepted up to a week after polls close. That policy may change depending on how the Supreme Court rules on a case challenging ballots arriving after election day. But even if that policy stretches the timeline, late-arriving ballots are not the main driver of delays. In 2024, only about 2.5% of all ballots arrived in the mail after election day.
Some observers argue that even compared with other states running similar elections, California lags behind. Election analysts Eli McKown-Dawson and Nate Silver wrote in a Substack piece that California “simply counts the ballots it has too slowly and its elections offices are underfunded. ” adding that if people are to be confident. “a good first step is to build one that works properly.”.
Comparisons are complicated, though. While seven other states also automatically mail ballots, experts say direct comparisons with California are difficult. In 2024, California processed about 13 million vote-by-mail ballots, while not even 3 million were counted in Colorado.
Critics also point to a broader question: if the state has worked hard to expand accessibility. why hasn’t turnout changed dramatically?. California remains relatively in the middle of the pack for voter turnout across the U.S. and while there have been spikes in certain election years. there has been no noticeable uptick over the last 15 years. according to a review of data from 2008 to 2024.
Becker said turnout is influenced by many factors, including California’s strong blue tilt. “Perceived competitiveness” or the lack of it often keeps voters from the polls. he said. as can uninspiring campaigns or even the weather. Still, he argued that accessibility shouldn’t be made harder. “Accessibility is always worth it,” Becker said.
Hoge. for her part. highlighted concerns about the voter registration process alongside the slow count. while making clear the delays don’t necessarily signal fraud. She has continued to push a more tempered narrative to many Republican leaders, including from the White House. On X, Hoge shared a post that fact-checked a photo of vote tabulations from L.A. County that appeared to show Spencer Pratt receiving no new votes in a daily vote count. She also boosted a video that dispelled rumors about Democrats stealing votes and ones about widespread fraud in California’s process.
“It’s a horrible roller coaster,” Hoge said about California’s election results. “It doesn’t make sense, and the fact that you’re just noticing it today doesn’t mean that it’s newly not making sense. … But until we win, we can’t change it.”
Even if California speeds up parts of its process. Becker said he expects the cycle of criticism and misinformation to continue. He said most elections are called relatively quickly in California—citing the state’s pick for president. which is usually confirmed on election night—but only a small share of extremely tight races take longer because those contests require a more complete count to call a winner.
Becker said the problem isn’t just the speed. “It doesn’t matter how fast California counts its ballots, … we would be seeing similar conspiracy theories, maybe just with a different framing,” Becker said. “California ends up being a very effective bogeyman.”
In Los Angeles and across California. the stakes are personal even when the process is procedural: a delayed call can mean days where campaigns harden. where election workers face harassment. and where the losing candidate waits in public limbo. For now. experts say voters will keep casting ballots at high volume. counties will keep verifying them through an “intensively human process. ” and the biggest fights may not be about whether the votes are valid—but about how long it takes for the state to say so with finality.
California election vote by mail vote count misinformation voter confidence Los Angeles mayoral race Gavin Newsom Spencer Pratt election verification