Almost three in 10 Californians have voted ahead of Tuesday’s special election
Nearly 30% of California’s 23 million registered voters have returned a ballot ahead of Tuesday’s special election, according to Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office.
Voters will decide whether to pass Proposition 50, a ballot initiative redrawing California’s congressional districts to flip five House seats from Republican to Democratic in next year’s midterms. Gov. Gavin Newsom launched the “Yes on 50” campaign to respond in kind after President Donald Trump urged Texas and other red states to redistrict to ensure the GOP maintained its congressional majority in 2026.
Some 6.6 million people have cast ballots, according to data released Sunday by Weber’s office, via vote-by-mail and by casting ballots in person or dropping them off at voting centers. The state has accepted 99.02% of them, meaning they have been verified and processed for counting.
The Voters Choice Act, passed in 2016, expanded access to make voting earlier and more accessible by granting all registered voters in participating counties a mail-in ballot. But only 29 out of 58 counties participate, with most of them concentrated in population centers like the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego and the Central Valley.
Data from Weber’s office showed that turnout was lower in counties that administer elections via polling place, like Siskiyou and Del Norte. Four rural North State counties — Alpine, Colusa, Sierra, and Plumas — conduct elections solely via mail and do not have polling places.
The largest number of ballots have come from Los Angeles County, where 1.2 million voters reported returning a ballot via vote-by-mail, followed by roughly 700,000 in San Diego County; 595,000 in Orange County; 382,000 in Riverside County; 310,000 in Santa Clara County; 307,000 in Alameda County and 281,000 in Sacramento County.
The high-stakes contest has drawn criticism from both fair election experts who decry Prop. 50 as unfair gerrymandering and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is sending observers to voting centers in Los Angeles, Kern, Orange, Fresno, and Riverside counties, which Newsom decried as voter intimidation and a potential setup for Trump to claim election fraud if Prop. 50 passes.
Weber said she’s unconcerned, and that federal monitors are commonplace in every election.
“We always have observers,” she told The Bee. “We’re prepared to host them and help them to understand the limitations of what they can do.”
This story was originally published November 3, 2025 at 11:10 AM with the headline "Almost three in 10 Californians have voted ahead of Tuesday’s special election."
