Delayed vote tallies in California are attributable to the vote-by-mail system and weeklong deadlines for receiving ballots, which undermines confidence in results, election experts say.
Tuesday is the deadline for the last of California’s ballots to arrive, where about 80% vote by mail and about 40% of ballots arrive after Election Day in the nation’s most populous state. These are among the factors that contribute to repeatedly delayed results.
On Sunday, it appeared that Republican mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt would fall out of contention for the general election after several days of appearing in the top two vote recipients along with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat. Another Democrat candidate, Nithya Raman, appeared to overtake Pratt for second place to face Bass in the general election. The state’s primaries allow the top two vote-getters, rather than party nominees, to advance to the general election.
California also doesn’t allow local jurisdictions to require voter ID and allows 22 days for “curing” ballots. Curing is when a voter’s ballot needs to be corrected or clarified to count, such as fixing illegible marks on the ballot or inserting a missing signature on the ballot envelope.
“There are a lot of consequential House races in the general election. We are likely going to have a similar conversation in November,” Andrew Bahl, a law team staff writer for Ballotpedia, which monitors election procedures, told the Daily Signal.
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