As the DOJ eyes California’s election procedures, gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton was in the Bay Area Friday to denounce, what he called, the ridiculously slow ballot count in the state.
As of Friday, NBC News projected the Democractic candidate, Xavier Becerra, advanced to the general election in the gubernatorial race.
The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters says approximately 400,000 ballots came in for Tuesday’s primary election, with about 150,000 ballots left to be counted as of Thursday night.
Counties have until July 2 for ballots to be counted and certified.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton showed up at the San Mateo County elections office to criticize Governor Gavin Newsom and democratic lawmakers for how long it takes to get election results.
He offered up a short-term plan to speed things up.
“The ‘election count accelerator plan’ that I’m laying out today is focused on an election count accelerator ‘core’, which is using existing administrative workers from our state government in non-essential roles to surge them to the election centers so we can get this done quickly,” he said.
NBC Bay Area reached out to the Governor’s Office for comment. The Office replied saying: “It’s concerning that a candidate for Governor doesn’t know the Governor has nothing to do with counting ballots.”
Hilton used Marin County as an example, and officials there pointed out that besides the sheer volume of ballots, many came in late, ironically, because of all the gubernatorial candidates.
The Santa Clara County Registrar agreed.
“With 60+ candidates on the ballot just for governor alone, obviously voters needed a little bit more time to make up their mind, as we saw that pretty much half of the ballots that are coming back this election came in at the last minute on election day and afterwards,” said Matt Morales with the Registrar of Voters.
Former gubernatorial candidate San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan scoffed at Hilton’s remarks.
“Steve Hilton is just parroting Donald Trump’s talking points, and Steve has been voting in California for a while now, he knows how the process works. I think the bottom line is he is concerned that once all the votes are counted, he may not be in the top two,” he said.
The Registrar of Voters points out the office puts out the running vote count every day, and so it might not be official until July 2, but says final results of the ballots counted here could be known as early as Monday.