Some Californians were busy carving Halloween pumpkins and taking their children trick-or-treating during this year’s election. Now they put up Christmas trees while the officials do it still counting votes in some places.
Now that the vast majority of ballots have been counted, most races have been called anyway by media organizations, including some very close races. In Orange County, Democrat Derek Tran was declared the winner last week in his race against incumbent Michelle Steel.
With that and a race in Iowa being held the same week, California now claims the honor of being home to the last congressional race in the country yet to be called. That’s in the Central Valley’s 13th District, where Democratic challenger Adam Gray, with an estimated 99% of votes counted as of Monday afternoon, led Republican Rep. John Duarte by 143 votes.
That doesn’t mean everyone should continue to hate California because it’s taking so long. First, we have more residents than any other state. Second, every voter in the state will automatically receive a ballot starting approximately one month before Election Day. In Los Angeles County, more than 70% of voters have mailed or dropped off ballots, said Mike Sanchez, spokesman for the county registrar-recorder. Nearly 90% of voters cast ballots by mail in the 2022 midterms, according to the California Secretary of State’s office.
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Californians may also register and vote by provisional ballot on Election Day. Processing those ballots takes more time.
Ballots in California had to be postmarked by Nov. 5 to be counted, but could be received by election officials up to seven days later. All those mail-in ballots must be checked to see if the signatures match those on the voter rolls. And if they don’t, voters are contacted and told they can correct — or “cure” — the ballot with a signature.
The state’s voters had until December 1 to determine their ballot. And so votes are still being counted, even though the Christmas shopping is in full swing.
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According to Sanchez, LA County workers have been processing and counting ballots every day since Nov. 6, the day after Election Day, except for Thanksgiving. In fact, the week after the election, the county had a 24-hour shift processing ballots.
Can some counties process and count ballots faster? Maybe. Some state lawmakers are interested in finding ways to speed up the process.
But more importantly, the slow pace has gone hand in hand with giving voters plenty of time and a few ways to get their ballots in — and then fix problems that could keep them from being counted . The laborious process of collecting and auditing these ballots speaks to both election integrity and giving voters access and opportunity to vote.
That makes it worth waiting for a few races that seemed to take forever.
There will be closure. All counties must submit their results by Friday for the statewide election. (And, as far as state officials know, no county has ever missed the deadline.) And the secretary of state is expected to announce statewide election results on Dec. 13 — still weeks before any of the winner’s deadlines begin.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
