{"id":673537,"date":"2026-03-22T10:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T10:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/673537\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T10:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T10:14:12","slug":"solutions-to-speed-california-vote-count-and-make-voting-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/673537\/","title":{"rendered":"Solutions to speed California vote count and make voting easy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Every two years, elite athletes compete in the Olympics<\/a>, biennial plants<\/a> \u2014 like carrots and onions<\/a> \u2014 produce seeds and people across America look on with consternation and mounting impatience<\/a> as California counts its election ballots.<\/p>\n

The prolonged tally has become as much a part of electioneering<\/a> in the Golden State as wall-to-wall advertising<\/a>, high-flown promises<\/a> and overstuffed mailboxes groaning beneath the weight of endless campaign fliers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The tabulation \u2014 which can last weeks past election day<\/a> \u2014 is the product, in large part, of a commendable objective: Encouraging as many people as possible to vote.<\/p>\n

California, which mails a ballot to every eligible voter<\/a>, ranks near the top of states in the ease of its elections. That\u2019s something to be celebrated. Voting is a way to help steer the direction of our state and nation and invest, as an active participant, in its future.<\/p>\n

Yay, participatory democracy!<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the lag time between election day and the final results has led to all sorts of wild, unfounded claims<\/a>, peddled mainly by Republicans seeking to curry favor with the sore-losing President Trump<\/a> by parroting his conspiratorial gabbling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey hold the elections open for weeks after election day,\u201d House Speaker Mike Johnson said recently<\/a>, falsely suggesting that chicanery cost the GOP three House seats in California in 2024<\/a>. \u201cIt looks on its face to be fraudulent.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of, um, hooey. <\/p>\n

There is no rampant cheating or election fraud in California. Period. Full stop.<\/p>\n

Still, those sorts of phony statements have deeply diminished faith in our elections and our increasingly rickety democracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So \u2014 what if it were possible to preserve California\u2019s friendly voting system<\/a> while, at the same time, speeding up the tabulation of its many millions of ballots?<\/p>\n

Kim Alexander believes it\u2019s possible to do both.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to stop explaining why it\u2019s taking so long and start figuring out how to [produce election results] in a more satisfying way,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are a lot of things that we could do better and do differently. It just takes some creative thinking and some will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simply put, \u201cThe longer it takes to count ballots, the more voter confidence erodes<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexander, head of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation<\/a>, has spent more than three decades working to make the state\u2019s elections more efficient, more transparent and more accountable.<\/p>\n

Her interest in politics and election mechanics came about while growing up in Culver City, where her father served as a councilman and mayor.<\/p>\n

As a 7-year-old, stationed in the garage, it was Alexander\u2019s job to track the returns in her dad\u2019s first campaign, toting up the numbers at an election night party while her mom, posted in the kitchen, called the city clerk for updates. Even at that young age, Alexander learned the importance of a fair and efficient tabulation process.<\/p>\n

Over the years, she watched as her father\u2019s political career was stymied by a Democratic gerrymander<\/a>, which blocked any hopes he had of being elected to Congress or the Legislature as a moderate Republican. She saw firsthand the influence of money in politics. (Her father told her of turning away donations that came with strings attached.) That helped turn her into a political reformer.<\/p>\n

After working as a legislative staffer and serving a stint at Common Cause, the good-government lobbying group, Alexander took over the California Voter Foundation in 1994.<\/p>\n

As a political noncombatant, Alexander won\u2019t say how it feels, and whether these days she\u2019s more or less optimistic, watching as reckless attacks on our elections come from inside the White House. \u201cI like to describe myself as a realist with high goals,\u201d is all she\u2019d allow. <\/p>\n

There are good reasons why it takes California so long to count its ballots. <\/p>\n

First off, there are a lot of them; more than 16 million residents voted <\/a>in the last presidential election, more than the population of all but 10 states. Voting by mail has exploded in popularity and it takes longer to count those ballots, as many don\u2019t arrive until after election day. Also, there are a number of safeguards to prevent fraud and ensure an accurate count. \u201cWe\u2019re checking all the signatures,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cWe\u2019re making sure nobody votes twice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simply explaining those facts can help build trust, she said. However, that won\u2019t speed up the state\u2019s vote counting. Here, Alexander suggested, are some things that can:<\/p>\n

\u2014 Increase funding for California\u2019s 58 counties to expand equipment, staff and the space needed to process ballots. In recent years, the state has been asking local election officials to do more and more without reimbursing their costs.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Educate voters and encourage them to turn their ballots in earlier. Along those lines, a system called \u201csign, scan and go\u201d allows voters to return their mail ballots in person at a designated polling place. A pilot program in Placer County found that that shaved three to four days off processing time. The system could be implemented statewide.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Better manage California\u2019s voter database, doing so from the top down in Sacramento, rather than having counties oversee their data and feed it into the system. That bottom-up approach creates delays and a lag time in processing ballots.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Create \u201cballot swap\u201d days to speed delivery of out-of-county ballots where they belong, also saving time. (Under California law, voters can return their ballot anywhere in the state, but it must be routed to their home county to be tabulated. That process can now take more than a week.)<\/p>\n

The problem, apart from perennial budget pressures, is that interest in election mechanics \u2014 a technical and arcane subject if ever there was one \u2014 is episodic and fleeting. It\u2019s like worrying about a leaky roof when the temperature is 95 degrees outside and the sun is blazing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But even without voters clamoring to address California\u2019s slow-poke vote count, lawmakers should act.<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently rose to defend the state\u2019s \u201csafe and secure elections\u201d against one of Trump\u2019s many unwarranted attacks<\/a>. If he wants to burnish his credentials for a 2028 presidential run<\/a> \u2014 which Newsom very much does \u2014 one way would be to speed up delivery of its election results.<\/p>\n

That way the rest of the country won\u2019t be asking again in November: What the heck\u2019s with California<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Every two years, elite athletes compete in the Olympics, biennial plants \u2014 like carrots and onions \u2014 produce…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":673538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[9110,1582,276,3059,284147,10208,15435,8761,28462,284146,2961,284148,224,5337,7088,443,14164,2452,1628],"class_list":["post-673537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ballot","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-county","tag-election-ballot","tag-election-day","tag-eligible-voter","tag-father","tag-golden-state","tag-kim-alexander","tag-la","tag-lag-time","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-lot","tag-system","tag-way","tag-week","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116272304210395268","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}