{"id":685443,"date":"2026-06-05T06:43:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T06:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/685443\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T06:43:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T06:43:14","slug":"california-draws-out-its-ballot-count-making-it-a-target-for-critics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/685443\/","title":{"rendered":"California draws out its ballot count, making it a target for critics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Days after the state\u2019s primary, California voters are in a familiar position — waiting to find out<\/a> which candidates will go on to the general election in their most high-profile races, for governor<\/a> and Los Angeles mayor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that those have yet to be resolved, along with several closely contested congressional races, because the state routinely takes<\/a> days, or even weeks, to fully tally races. Nor is it unusual for President Donald Trump to complain about the pace of the count and allege fraud, as he did Thursday. It\u2019s something he\u2019s done repeatedly<\/a> in the past.<\/p>\n

What was unusual was that Trump announced that his Department of Justice was investigating the count: \u201cWhy the vote counting DELAY???,\u201d the president posted on his social media account.<\/p>\n

He suggested that the state\u2019s Democrats were somehow cheating so two candidates he favors \u2014 Republican Steve Hilton in the governor\u2019s race and Spencer Pratt in the nonpartisan mayor\u2019s race \u2014 would be bumped from the top two slots and therefore ineligible for the November general election.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see what\u2019s happening in California, they\u2019re rigging the election,\u201d he told reporters during an Oval Office gathering Thursday.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s posts prompted a response from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose press office posted a clip of a CNN video explaining how the nation\u2019s most populous state prioritizes accuracy and accessibility over speed, drawing out the count.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the record: we wish the votes were counted faster, too,\u201d Newsom\u2019s office posted.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment on whether it was investigating the ballot counting.<\/p>\n

Slow count is designed to ensure accuracy, but opens door to election lies<\/p>\n

The law in California practically mandates<\/a> a drawn-out count. Ballots are mailed to every eligible voter \u2014 some 23 million of them \u2014 and the state has permissive rules for returning them. They will be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive at an election office within seven days.<\/p>\n

Only after the polls have closed and most of the country has gone to sleep can local election workers begin the lengthy process of verifying the legitimacy of the late-arriving mail ballots and then start to tabulate them.<\/p>\n

If a voter\u2019s signature on the ballot envelope doesn\u2019t match what\u2019s on file, election officials are required to give those voters a chance to come in and prove their identity so the ballot will count, delaying a final tally further.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe might not like how California administers its elections (and I don\u2019t),\u201d wrote Stephen Richer, a former Republican election official in Maricopa County, Arizona, on the social platform X. \u201cBut that doesn\u2019t make it fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, Newsom signed a bill requiring the vote count to be completed within 13 days, rather than the previous 30 days. To get an extension, counties must inform the Secretary of State\u2019s Office of the reason for the delay.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not quick enough for the president: \u201cThe Dumocrats are at it again!\u201d the president wrote on his social media platform. \u201cThey are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a video posted on X, Hilton slammed the state\u2019s counting as \u201cjust another shambles brought to you by California Democrats.\u201d Notably, he said that so far his campaign has seen nothing to indicate it will need to go to court. He urged his supporters to take advantage of the state, allowing voters to fix any issues with their mail ballots \u2014 one of the steps that drags out the count.<\/p>\n

State Assemblymember Marc Berman, a Democrat who wrote the bill to accelerate ballot counting, said Trump\u2019s comments about the counting process were disappointing and \u201ca lie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Trump is laser focused on lying about our elections and undermining voters\u2019 faith in our democracy, so that Republicans can then try to pass policies like Voter ID laws that make it harder for people to vote, our priority is to make sure that every validly cast ballot is counted,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Many Democratic voters waited until the last minute to cast their ballots<\/p>\n

Some experts warned that the count from Tuesday\u2019s primary might take even longer than after previous elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat compounds things this time around is that Democrats have been holding on to their ballots,\u201d said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s millions of Democrats this year were exceptionally slow to send in their ballots, apparently waiting until the last minute to make a selection in the ever-evolving governor\u2019s race<\/a>. The state operates a primary in which the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election, and Democrats had been fretting for months<\/a> that having so many Democrats in the race would splinter the vote, allowing two Republicans to claim the top two spots.<\/p>\n

Democratic voters appeared to wait until the end to see which of their candidates was emerging as a favorite. The high number of late ballots will likely make the delay in getting final counts even greater.<\/p>\n

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber issued a statement Thursday saying the state\u2019s priority was ensuring the tally is done correctly. \u201cAccuracy comes before speed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While millions of ballots have been counted by now, it\u2019s the uncounted ones that loom largest for close races.<\/p>\n

Despite being an overwhelmingly Democratic state, California has featured some of the nation\u2019s closest congressional elections, sometimes decided by just a few hundred votes, so there\u2019s often no way to determine a winner until the weekslong ballot count has concluded. In 2024, one House race wasn\u2019t called until December.<\/p>\n

Things get even more complicated in a primary election, such as Tuesday\u2019s. That\u2019s because the news isn\u2019t just the top vote-getter but also the second-place finisher. To know the true outcome of any race, enough votes need to be tallied to know for certain who finished in first and second.<\/p>\n

Later ballots skew toward Democrats, feeding conspiracy theories<\/p>\n

Another side effect of the enormous crush of late mail ballots that get tallied last is that the final vote gets more and more Democratic. That\u2019s because Republicans are more likely to return their ballots early or vote in person on Election Day. Those ballots get counted first.<\/p>\n

The gradual shift in the vote toward Democrats as ballot counting continues has sparked all sorts of conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n

Republicans have long complained about the California count, even though the GOP did well in close House races in the state in 2024. The Republican National Committee filed lawsuits in other states challenging the legality of counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day and the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to rule on the issue<\/a> sometime this month.<\/p>\n

But worries about the California vote count aren\u2019t only a partisan issue. Voting advocates have urged state lawmakers to better fund local election offices so they can process the avalanche of late-arriving ballots faster.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Legislature needs to throw a lot more money to get the count quicker,\u201d Hasen said.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles and Sophie Austin in Sacramento contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Days after the state\u2019s primary, California voters are in a familiar position — waiting to find out which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[164749,23,2356,12,1070,2013,793,3031,3,111,12486,49130,190894,73312,122508,8638,795,3438,21,19,22,20,25,24,8647,800],"class_list":["post-685443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-2026-elections","tag-america","tag-california","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-general-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-rick-hasen","tag-shirley-weber","tag-spencer-pratt","tag-stephen-richer","tag-steve-hilton","tag-u-s-democratic-party","tag-u-s-news","tag-u-s-republican-party","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-voting","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}