California's Mail-Ballot Count Stretches Past Two Weeks After June Primary

Summary

California finished its June primary not on election night but somewhere deep into the following two weeks, as county election offices worked through a flood of mail ballots that is now simply how the state votes. More than 90 percent of California ballots arrive by mail, a share that has grown steadily since the pandemic-era expansion of universal vote-by-mail, and each one requires signature verification and processing before it can be counted. The bottleneck is structural: California also allows same-day voter registration, which means eligibility questions for some ballots can't be resolved until days after polls close. Election administrators say there's no quick fix. Speeding things up would require either a significant infusion of funding for equipment and staff, or rolling back the expanded mail and registration access that has genuinely increased turnout. That's a trade-off no one in Sacramento has shown much appetite for making. The delay feeds a persistent argument from critics that slow counts erode public confidence in elections, even when the final results themselves are accurate and well-documented. Supporters of the current system counter that completeness matters more than speed, and that every valid ballot deserves to be counted regardless of how long that takes.