California could be forced to wait for results thanks to slow vote-counting system

A voter places their ballot in a dropbox in Norwalk, California on Monday. Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen A voter places their ballot in a dropbox in Norwalk, California on Monday. Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images California could be forced to wait for results thanks to slow vote-counting system Experts say deluge of last-minute absentee ballots and notoriously slow system could delay results in tightest races Midterm primaries – live results and updates California’s primary elections, including its fiercely fought gubernatorial contest, will be at the mercy of a notoriously slow vote-counting system after the polls close on Tuesday, and it could be days or even weeks before the outcomes of the tightest races become clear. Voting experts expect the state’s 58 county elections offices to be deluged with last-minute absentee ballots, as they have been in the last few election cycles, and spend weeks undertaking a painstaking ballot-by-ballot verification process. That presents a procedural problem whenever races are close, as they tend to be in the state’s most competitive congressional districts, and the whole country is left waiting – as it was in 2020, 2022 and 2024 – to find out which party controls the House of Representatives. What is California’s ‘jungle primary’ – and why are some Democrats calling to change the system? Read more It is also a political headache worrying everyone from Gavin Newsom , the state’s outgoing Democratic governor, to an aggrieved Republican party that has not won statewide office for 20 years and has become increasingly bold about accusing its political opponents of playing dirty, even without evidence. In the 2024 presidential election, more than 25% of California’s vote total arrived too late to be counted by election day. The percentage could be even higher this time, since many Californians made a strategic decision to postpone their vote until they had a clearer picture of who in the crowded governor’s race stood a chance of finishing in the top two and advancing to November’s general election. Final polls indicate it is a volatile three-way race between two Democrats, Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer, and the Republican frontrunner, Steve Hilton. In a state with more than 23 million registered voters, the volume can quickly overwhelm poll workers who, in the words of one voting expert, are already “ overworked , under-appreciated and under attack”. Opinion polls and other data also show it is also a recipe for voter frustration across the political spectrum. “Like it or not, the more time that passes between election day and when results are known, the more voter confidence erodes,” says Kim Alexander of the California Voter Foundation, a nonpartisan voting rights group that has been lobbying to speed up the process. “It’s an invitation to false claims about the reliability of the voting process even though we have the most accessible, secure and verifiable el