The criticism has been amplified by Trump and other Republican leaders. House Speaker Mike Johnson criticized California’s election process to reporters on Capitol Hill Monday.<\/p>\n
“I’m not saying it’s rigged,” Johnson said. “I’m saying it stinks to high heaven, and everybody knows that.”<\/p>\n
When asked by reporters for evidence, Johnson responded: “Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that it’s impossible to prove, but I think everybody knows instinctively, something is wrong here, and that’s a concern.”<\/p>\n
MORE: Wiener, Chan advance to general election for CA’s 11th Congressional District to succeed Pelosi<\/a><\/p>\n Asked whether anything was currently going wrong in California’s election tabulation process, Berman told ABC7, “It doesn’t appear like it.”<\/p>\n “These are concerns and sometimes complaints and sometimes conspiracies that we hear every two years,” he said. “I also think that we need to continuously to show voters and show the public the how our democracy works, how our election systems work so that they can get that confidence that what’s happening is completely legitimate.”<\/p>\n More than 80% of Californians voted by mail in the 2024 general election, according to data from the California Secretary of State’s office.<\/p>\n Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data, said California’s system gives voters multiple options for casting ballots, including mail, drop boxes and in-person voting sites.<\/p>\n “California has really leaned into and a model for our elections that prioritizes every single vote and tries to ensure that everybody who attempts to vote, that their vote counts,” he said.<\/p>\n MORE: Slow CA vote count criticized by Trump, GOP governor hopeful Steve Hilton: ‘Another Democrat fiasco’<\/a><\/p>\n Mitchell added that verifying and processing all of those ballots takes a significant amount of time, especially for mail-in ballots that come in after Election Day.<\/p>\n “They have to check the signature, and they have to go through the process of actually counting that along with millions of others,” he said. “And so the time it takes is extraordinary.”<\/p>\n Political observers say California could speed up ballot counting by dedicating significantly more staffing and resources to the process, though doing so could require diverting millions of dollars from other state priorities.<\/p>\n
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