UPDATE 2: On Wednesday night, L.A. County reported they have just under one million ballots to process over the next 30 days.
The districts still in play in LA and Orange, 48, 45, 39, and 25, are all well within totals (about 6k votes in each race) that could swing as ballots are counted. CA-10 is San Jose, and I cannot find info yet on how many Santa Clara County ballots are uncounted, but it is likely that there are as many proportionally as the other two counties.
UPDATE: The original diary was written on Election Day. This update is being made on Wednesday morning.
As expected, there are a massive number of uncounted ballots statewide. These will likely be highly concentrated in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. The registrars have not posted exact figures yet in all counties. The only data I can find is from Orange County, which reports they have 418,600 known ballots left to count. This will not be a final number, since mail ballots will be accepted throughout the week. I can’t find that L.A. County has provided an estimate yet.
This is a MASSIVE portion of the vote in Orange County, and we can presume this is the case in L.A., and perhaps elsewhere. The most pertinent races to consider are the close House races. A lot of them are showing “100% reported” with results very different from polling - the precincts being 100% reported does not mean the ballots have been counted.
So hold on! Many of these races are in mid-count. I have no idea what sort of partisan mix might be in the uncounted ballots...no one does. Those uncalled races are uncalled for a reason. Let’s get counting!
Original Diary:
Before we start — I just voted. My apologies, but I didn’t vote for every Democrat on the ballot, seriously. BWA HA HA (evil laugh). Because in half my races, the jungle primary produced two Dem general candidates. If I voted for all of them, but votes would be invalid. Ha. Election Day joke. Give me license — it’s been a long one.
Turnout looked good, btw. A five minute line...every booth occupied at 1 pm. For my polling location, this looked like good turnout. We don’t have lines here. Funny how that happens when old white racist republicans aren’t in power.
By law, California takes 30 days to count all the votes and provide a final report
California is going to prove vital to the final House count this year. We have a TON of seats up for grabs, and a lot of them are close. But it will very likely take days or weeks to count all the votes, and that could leave a lot of these races uncertain for a while.
Many of you may find yourselves frustrated, and perhaps even angry, if Cali doesn’t provide a clear picture of the outcomes tonight. Because of this possibility, I think a diary discussing why is warranted. But the primary reasons our counts are slow are because:
- Our voting systems are open
- Our voting systems are transparent
- Our voting systems are inclusive
- In other words, our voting systems are progressive
These are the specific factors that contribute to the slow vote count:
1. Wide use of mail ballots. California allows anyone to request a mail ballot, and Californians have really, really taken to this system. These ballots can be postmarked on Election Day, and can be received for the rest of the week (3 days...they’re due by EOD Friday).
But here’s another factoid — ballots have another four days after Friday to be received if the post office delivers a mail ballot to any registrar. If the post office in San Francisco finds a pile of mail ballots with San Diego addresses on Friday, they’ll take them to the San Francisco registrar...and then they begin a four day deadline that extends into next week.
In addition to the ballots coming in later and in bulk, the mail ballots that we use are slow to count. The ballots we use are made to be machine-counted, but a really high percentage of them end up in the hand-count bin. This can be because they’re bent in the mail...or a voter’s intentions aren’t clear to the machine. In addition, every mail ballot is cross-checked with in-person voting, which will be discussed in the provisional ballot section below.
2. Same day registration. We call this ‘conditional voter registration’ in state law. You wanted this, progressives? Well we delivered! Yay! But what this means is that these voters complete their voter registration forms AND ballot at the polling place, then both are set aside for special processing.
The registration application will run through the normal process...including that it might necessitate some research, cross-referencing, or other time-intensive work. Once the registration is completed, the voters ballot goes into the bin of provisional ballots waiting to be counted (below).
3. Many, many, many, many, many, MANY polling places. I think in 2016 we operated over 22,000 unique polling locations across the state. This results in a lot of coordination work...transferring ballots to the registrar hubs, etc. This is going to get better, as discussed below in ‘future changes.’
4. Voter options. Our system encourages voting, and tries to prevent a voter from disqualifying themselves. If a San Diego voter forgets that they’re up in L.A. on Election Day, we want them to vote if they want to. If a voter got a mail ballot and lost it...we want them to show up and vote in person if they want to. If a voter moved last week, we want them to be able to vote if they want to.
This system flexibility comes at a cost of admin work on the back end. And that admin work takes time.
5. ALL THE PROVISIONAL BALLOTS. Everything above contributes to there being a ton of provisional/conditional ballots. (The terms mean the same thing...but I think we are moving from calling them provisional to conditional).
I got to vote provisionally once because the rolls got messed up in my precinct, so I have experience with them beyond being an election nerd, lol. When a voter gets a provisional ballot, they have to fill out a slightly longer form (name, address, past addresses, and some questions about why they are voting this way and if they think they mailed a ballot). NO ID IS REQUIRED, EVER. The voter then fills out their special ballot the same as the regular one. But the poll worker places it in a special envelope, sets it aside, and the voter gets a special ballot tracking ID number.
These ballots then have to be cross-checked by the county officials. For every single one, they match the voter registration. Did this voter get a mail ballot? Did the mail ballot get returned? Does the voter name/info match any other provisional voters or ballots anywhere else in the system?
Most provisional ballots move forward into the counting pile. Some are set aside for a second round of scrutiny. The voter’s unique ballot ID allows them to follow their ballot and see whether it was counted, and if not why it wasn’t. My one time voting this way was counted on day #8 in Los Angeles County, it was the 2018 primaries.
How the slow vote count will look this cycle
For the reasons cited above, the vote counts will take a while. In every election since 2014, the large counties have taken the full thirty days to certify their results. This will be particularly impactful in the Orange County races. Those four competitive districts could be caught up in weeks-long uncertainty if they’re close.
And I’m expecting the big counties to run slow. Orange County reported that they’ve received 750,000 mail ballots as of this weekend. The 2016 early vote was just under a million. With ballots streaming in by mail all week long, it’s going to be a busy cycle for those guys.
What we will get as the count proceeds is twice-daily reports from each county, which will be posted to the Secretary of State’s page here. Some time this week, they’ll post a chart of every county, with a total count of counted ballots, uncounted mail ballots, uncounted provisional ballots, and rejected/questionable/problem ballots. Expect to see Los Angeles and Orange County reflect hundreds of thousands of uncounted ballots when this report goes live.
Then each day those totals will slowly drop. In my experience, this can be haphazard and unpredictable. In the 2016 primaries, L.A. country had a week where they processed like 1,000 ballots out of 300k remaining. Then the next week they processed 100k.
Races can shift
I repeat: races can shift, just like on election night. I think this deserves mention. This isn’t like other state systems where they may have 0.4% of the votes to count as provisional ballots. The numbers in our system can and will result in dramatic shifts in the margins as we proceed.
In the 2016 primary, the Clinton/Sanders margin was 14 points and like 120k votes. In the end, the margin shrunk to 7 points, but her vote margin grew to 370k votes. The counting didn’t shift the winner of the race, but if it had been a closer contest it very well could have.
Like the counts on election night, there are going to be certain patterns to which votes are outstanding. Rural counties will wrap up their extended counts pretty quickly. In these Orange Country races, it’s possible that less dense parts of the country will count quicker. You could very well get extended counts that are front-loaded with Republicans, then the dense, urban, minority areas start wrapping their counts and you get a disproportionate number of Dems at the end. Or not. Who knows? Democracy is so exciting!!!
Just be aware — if a race is not called, pretend like it’s still election night at 9 pm, even if it’s late November.
Things will get better — we promise!!
We take pride in our progressive voting system in California. But don’t worry, we don’t take pride in it running so slow, ha. The reason it’s so slow right now is that we are in the middle of a reform process. We’ve opened voting pretty wide, and now we need to work on efficiency.
This will (hopefully) be the last election with vote counts this slow. In 2020, the state will roll out ‘voting centers’ as opposed to polling locations.
The voting centers are going to expand the franchise and make voting even more accessible and progressive. They will offer true early voting, and be open for ten days before Election Day. Those ballots can be better counted in advance. Some counties will mail every single voter an actual ballot that they can fill out in advance (or get a clean one at a center).
Voters will also have expanded accessibility options at voting centers. There will be electronic devices that allow a voter to customize their experience. If a voter decides they need Spanish materials but opted for English, they can switch in the booth. If a voter can’t read the materials, they can adjust font size. (But the ballots are still paper...this doesn’t mean electronic voting).
There will be far fewer centers than polling sites. Sacramento County, for example, has finalized their plan with 78 centers, down from 550 polling locations. But these centers have been strategically placed, to ensure that populations are evenly distributed and that people can get to them.
The largest counties have embraced voting centers. For more information on the new system, here’s the totally cute L.A. County intro video about them:
Pretty Cool!