Some Californians have been carving pumpkins for Halloween and tricking their kids into voting in this year's election. Now they put up Christmas trees while the officers are still there still to consolidate votes in other areas.
With so many votes counted, many races have been called by media organizations anyway, including close ones. In Orange County, Democrat Derek Tran was declared the winner in his race against incumbent Michelle Steel last week.
With that and the race in Iowa called the same week, California now claims the distinction of being home to the last conference race in the country that hasn't been called yet. That's in the Central Valley's 13th District, where, with about 99% of votes counted as of Monday afternoon, Democratic challenger Adam Gray was leading Republican Rep. John Duarte by 143 votes.
That doesn't mean everyone should continue to hate California for taking so long. First, we have more people than any other state. Second, every voter in the state is automatically mailed a ballot starting about a month before election day. In Los Angeles County, more than 70% of voters have mailed or absent ballots, said Mike Sanchez, spokesman for the county recorder. According to the California secretary of state's office, nearly 90% of voters will vote by mail in the 2022 midterms.
Californians are also allowed to register and vote by provisional ballot on election day. It takes a lot of time to process those votes.
California ballots were supposed to be postmarked by Nov. 5 to be counted but not received by election officials until seven days later. All those submitted ballots must be checked to see if the signatures match those on the voter list. And if they don't, voters are contacted and told they can correct – or “here” – the ballot by signing.
County voters have until Dec. 1 to correct their votes. And so we still have votes to count even as Christmas hits its peak.
LA County officials have been processing and counting ballots every day since Nov. 6, the day after election day, excluding Thanksgiving, according to Sanchez. In fact, the week after the election, the county had round-the-clock ballot processing shifts.
Can other states process and count votes faster? It is possible. Some state legislatures are interested in finding ways to speed up the process.
But the most important thing is that the slow pace goes hand in hand with allowing voters enough time and several ways to cast their ballots – and fix problems that could prevent them from being counted. The arduous process of collecting and verifying these votes speaks both to the integrity of the election and to giving voters access and opportunities to vote.
That makes it worth waiting for a few races that seemed to take forever to call.
Closing is coming. All districts are due to submit their statewide election results on Friday. (Also, as far as state officials know, no state has missed the deadline.) And the secretary of state is expected to certify statewide election results on Dec. 13 — weeks before any election results begin.
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