What’s taking California so long to count its ballots from Election Day?

More than 11 days after polls closed around the nation and Donald Trump was declared president-elect of the United States, California is still moving methodically through roughly 800,000 uncounted ballots that are holding up final tallies in several contests.

As of Friday, Nov. 15, four congressional races — including a local matchup between Republican Michelle Steel and Democrat Derek Tran in the 45th Congressional District, who are separated by just 58 votes — remained too close to call. The race could play a key role in whether Republicans are able expand their new majority in the House, yet it could be days, or even weeks, until a clear winner emerges.

The long delay stems from Californians moving away from in-person voting. The state is one of eight in the country, plus Washington, D.C., that sends vote-by-mail ballots to all registered voters, ensuring a more tedious process to tally election results.

Criticism about the lagging vote tabulation prompted Secretary of State Shirley Weber to take to the social media site X on Friday to urge patience in “the weeks ahead.”

“It takes time to ensure every ballot is counted, every ballot is accounted for and every voter only voted once,” Weber said. “State law gives California election officials 30 days after election date to complete vote count, auditing and certification.”

In Orange and Los Angeles counties, where CD 45 is located, there were still an estimated 71,911 and 79,400 ballots left to process, respectively, as of Friday, without a clear indication of how many of those could impact that race. Officials in neighboring San Bernardino and Riverside counties likewise estimated 84,600 and 37,500 votes, respectively, remained to be counted in their areas.

In the four-county area, one state Senate race and three Assembly races were still undecided as a result.

‘Sows distrust in the system’

Assemblymember Joe Patterson, R-Rocklin, told KCRA in Sacramento that prolonged election tallies can hurt trust in the system.

“Just because it’s been a problem for a long time doesn’t mean we can’t solve it or shouldn’t solve it,” Patterson said. “It’s really important to note that the longer this goes on, whether it’s true or not, it sows distrust in the system, and we need more confidence in our elections system.”

California lags behind the rest of the nation because of the sheer number of ballots cast here — more than 16 million compared to roughly 11 million in Texas and 8 million in New York — and its reliance on voting by mail and all that comes with that. This year in Los Angeles County alone, 73% of voters in the county — more than 2.7 million people — used vote by mail.

California’s shift over the last two decades to primarily voting via vote-by-mail ballots, which contrary to the name often end up in drop boxes instead, has steadily resulted in slower counts.

In November 2004, election officials counted 81% of the ballots cast — 67% of which were in person — within two days of the election. By the March 2024 primary, nearly 90% of the ballots cast in California had shifted to vote-by-mail and only 59% of ballots were counted within two days, according to the California Voter Foundation.

Tedious process

Vote-by-mail ballots take longer to process than those cast in person because election officials must check for duplicate ballots, verify signatures and sometimes remake ballots that have been been flattened, damaged or marked improperly, according to the California Voter Foundation.

California allows until Dec. 1 to “cure” problem ballots from voters who made a mistake, such as forgetting their signature, signing in the wrong place or not enclosing their ballot in the proper envelope. County election officials also try to cure ballots with signatures that don’t match a voter’s original registration card. As of Friday, 128,500 ballots in California still needed to undergo the tedious curing process, which involves reaching out to the voter to try to resolve the issue.

Compounding the delay is that under vote-by-mail rules in California, the state accepts postmarked ballots for a week after election night, whereas some states, such as Florida, do not accept them after polls close on Election Day.

Goal is higher turnout

Assemblymember Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, authored the 2021 law that continued the pandemic-era mandate that every registered voter should receive a vote-by-mail ballot and increased the acceptance period from three days to seven. The goal, he said, is to “make it as easy as possible for every active registered voter in California to vote.”

“I realize that in today’s society everyone expects immediate gratification, but I personally think higher voter turnout should be the primary goal of our election system while also ensuring for security and an accurate count,” Berman said in a statement.

A 2021 study published by the Public Policy Institute of California found that states that mail a ballot to every registered voter see turnout increases on average of 4% or more. For policymakers, reforms such as the vote-by-mail expansion are more about giving voters a choice and aren’t expected to move the needle by more than few percentage points in general, said Mindy Romero, founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy and a co-author on the study.

“You don’t expect a huge sea change from any election reform that is about opening up access,” Romero said. “The fact that it takes so long is a good thing, it’s about ensuring the ballot is matched up with somebody’s signature.”

While this year’s turnout is not finalized, estimates suggest it will be underwhelming at worst to average at best — and certainly nowhere near the huge showing in 2020. A comparison of the votes cast and the estimated outstanding ballots against the registered voters would put the turnout at roughly 71%, the lowest for a presidential election in the last two decades, according to figures from the secretary of state’s website.

If instead, the vote count is compared against the number of eligible voters, which some experts argue is a more fair assessment because California’s shift to automatic voter registration inflates registered voter totals, then this year’s turnout, estimated at about 60%, would fall roughly in line with other every presidential election, excluding 2020, since 2004.

Whichever way you calculate it, California will fall below the turnout in Florida. There, only about 25% of the state voted by mail this year and 99% of the results were tallied on election night.

Comparing one state’s turnout to another, or the turnout one year to a prior year, is “comparing apples to oranges,” as different ballot issues can impact how many people show up, according to Berman.

Participation is ‘up to the voter’

“I think our job is to make it as easy as possible for voters to participate in their democracy, and then it’s up to the voter as to whether or not they care enough to participate in that election,” he said. “I believe sending every active registered voter a ballot in the mail, and then also providing them the opportunity to vote in person, gives them every opportunity to participate.”

Still, Berman said he understands the frustration for those stuck waiting for results and expressed his interest in finding ways to speed up the count.

“For example, even though Election Day was a week ago, the two counties I represent each show more than 40,000 unprocessed vote-by-mail ballots that were received on or before Election Day,” he said on Wednesday, Nov. 13. “I am curious why that is the case, and what more we can do to help them process those ballots.”

Berman’s bill, AB 37, was widely supported and faced opposition from only one organization, the conservative Election Integrity Project California, according to the Assembly Floor Analysis. The analysis states Election Integrity Project expressed concerns that an expansion of vote-by-mail could lead to voter fraud.

“There is no need to send ballots to those who have not requested them and certainly not to registrants no longer in a position to vote legitimately,” the organization stated. The project’s leadership could not be reached for comment.

This year, California sent out estimated 6.5 million vote-by-mail ballots — costly counties roughly $11 million in printing and shipping — to voters who did not end up casting a vote at all. And that complicates things for county election officials, who have no idea how many ballots remain uncounted in any given race, including the close ones.

“We don’t know how many ballots will be cast in any of these contests until they’re all counted,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.

Every vote makes a difference

The foundation launched an initiative this year called the Close Count Transparency Project that highlights how every vote makes a difference in California because so many races are decided by narrow margins.

“I don’t think people would be so bothered by our long vote counts if races could be decided more quickly,” she said. “Thanks to legislative term limits, independent redistricting and the top two primary system, we have more competition in our congressional races and our legislative races.”

In 2022, the tallying went on for so long that congressional orientations began before all of the winners had been decided, Alexander said. That happened again this year, as soon-to-be lawmakers descended on Capitol Hill on Tuesday for orientations. This year, in undecided races, both candidates were invited to attend.

Alexander said some additional tweaks to vote-by-mail could help, such as allowing people to opt out of vote-by-mail if they intend to vote in person, or to turn in mailed ballots, without the signed envelope, at voting centers on Election Day.

But both Romero and Alexander said that if voters want faster results, the main factor is funding.

“If people want to see it happen faster, lawmakers need to step up and provide the funding that is needed by county election departments to accelerate the vote count,” Alexander said. “That would make a big difference.”