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Susan Shelley: Why California takes forever to count votes

June 3, 2026

Imagine an election system that verified voters at a location close to where they lived, deposited their completed ballots in a locked and secured container, and transported that container to a secure location for counting on the very night that the election was held.

Is this a fantasy? Is it a high-tech creation of artificial intelligence? Is it too advanced for county governments to possibly implement?

No, it’s simply the way California always conducted elections, until the state wrecked the simple process of voting and counting votes.

In the abandoned system, back in the days before it took a month to count California’s votes, eligible voters were registered to vote voluntarily, not automatically. Counties divided their jurisdiction into precincts, and polling places in every neighborhood were established to conduct the election for one or more precincts in the area. These pop-up sites could even be located in a neighbor’s garage.

Voters would show up on Election Day, just one election day, state their name and address, and sign the poll book, a paper register of all the voters in the precincts voting at the location. That was the verification process. The voter would be handed a paper ballot to complete at one of the temporary booths. They’d deposit the ballot in the locked container.

The paper ballots would arrive that very night at the county’s election center and they’d be run through scanners as fast as they could be taken out of the containers and lined up in a tray.

Presto. Election results.

People who couldn’t get to the polls for whatever reason could request an absentee ballot or even request to be a permanent absentee voter. Absentee ballots take longer to count, because the election workers have to verify that the voter is registered and that the voter’s signature matches the signature on file. In the Before Days, ballots had to arrive by Election Day in order to be valid.

Then California changed everything.

In 2020, the government’s response to the COVID virus included a decision to mail a ballot to every active registered voter, a change later made permanent. For the 2026 primary election, the counties mailed ballots to more than 23 million registered voters.

That meant the June 2 primary was really the May 4 primary, because that’s when voting began. Not everybody was ready to vote on May 4 and most chose to wait. That’s their right. California has set up a system that creates an insane amount of work for county employees if voters wait until Election Day to vote with a mail ballot, but that doesn’t justify pressuring Californians to vote early. There’s no obligation to vote before Election Day.

Another emergency change in 2020, later made permanent, was a set of regulations from the Secretary of State that made the process of signature matching slower and more complicated. A signature “possessing multiple, significant, and obvious distinctive differing characteristics from the signature(s) in the voter’s registration record” can’t be rejected at that point as a mismatch. First it has to be shown to two more election officials, who must concur, beyond a reasonable doubt, in the decision to reject the ballot.

Then there is the “curing” process. If a signature on a mailed ballot envelope is missing or doesn’t match, the county has up to 14 days after Election Day to notify the voter. The signed verification form must be received back no later than 22 days after Election Day.

So state law essentially guarantees that results in close races can’t be known for weeks. We saw this process play out when Proposition 1, the $6.3 billion bond for homeless housing and treatment facilities, was too close to call after the polls closed on March 5, 2024. For two weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom led a frantic effort to chase down voters and “cure” ballots. The Associated Press finally called the race on March 20. Proposition 1 passed 50.2% to 49.8%.

A newly proposed law, Assembly Bill 2604, would allow signature curing by text message. That’s the wrong solution. The right solution is to go back to sending mail ballots only to those who request them, and to verify most voters in person, at the polls.

It may be quaint, but it’s fast.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley

Orange County Register

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Susan Shelley: Why California takes forever to count votes

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