California counts every vote. That’s a strength, not a weakness | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- California prioritizes counting eligible ballots over prioritizing speed for media.
- State procedures allow mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day and signature cures.
- California provides transparent, observable ballot processing and bipartisan safeguards.
California’s vote-counting process is under attack again.
President Donald Trump has claimed that the state’s extended ballot-counting timeline is evidence that Democrats are “trying to steal” elections. Some Republicans and conservative commentators have echoed this accusation, pointing to the fact that California often takes days or weeks to finalize election results.
Even one Democrat, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, suggested state leaders should fundamentally rethink its process. Khanna argued in an X post earlier this week that the state should invest enough resources to count the vast majority of votes within 48 hours because the current timeline is “eroding trust and spawning conspiracy theories.”
Public trust certainly matters. But California should not redesign its election system to accommodate conspiracy theories, internet trolls or politically motivated attacks.
California’s election system is something to be proud of because it places a higher value on counting every eligible vote than on disenfranchising voters in order to produce instant results for cable television and social media.
The reality is that California has built an election system around a simple principle: When there is a conflict between speed and voter participation, participation wins.
That means voters can mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day. It means voters have opportunities to correct signature issues. Provisional ballots are reviewed to ensure eligible voters are not deprived of their rights. Election officials take the time necessary to verify results accurately rather than rushing to satisfy demands for 48-hour results.
None of these safeguards exist by accident. They were adopted because California learned over decades that rigid deadlines often punish voters who did everything right.
As Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., recently explained, speeding up the process would require eliminating or curtailing many of the protections that help ensure legitimate votes are counted.
“If you’re going to make it quicker, it’s going to cost tens of millions of dollars, and you’re going to have to do it, not just in this one instance of the L.A. mayor, where we had this close race, but you have to do it in all 58 counties,” Mitchell said. “You’re going to be spending money to double and triple the staffs of Mono County’s registrar’s office every year for every election just because you’re afraid of internet trolls attacking the system disingenuously.”
That is the question Californians should be asking: What exactly are we trying to solve?
Because the most important fact in this debate is frequently ignored.
In the Los Angeles mayoral race, speeding up the count would have not changed the outcome. Not one bit.
Conservative influencer Spencer Pratt still would have dropped to third place.
The problem is not that California counts ballots too slowly. The problem is that some people refuse to accept legitimate election results whenever their preferred candidate loses.
No amount of additional spending can fix that.
Consider one example Mitchell offered: Voters in Capitola, a coastal city in Santa Cruz County, can mail a ballot just a few miles from the country registrar’s office. Yet the postal service often routes that ballot first through Santa Clara County before it returns to Santa Cruz.
The voter did everything correctly, Mitchell said.
Should that ballot be discarded simply because election officials want to produce results a day or two sooner?
That is effectively what some critics are demanding.
Mindy Romero, founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California, notes that research consistently shows Californians are broadly satisfied with their election experience.
“Research study after research study, analysis after analysis have shown us that there is no significant level of voter fraud in the United States,” Romero said. Claims of widespread fraud, she added, appear “at best disingenuous” and ultimately politically motivated.
The greatest danger is not that California takes a week or even two to count ballots. It’s that relentless attacks on election integrity will discourage participation and give some a platform to propose ending elections.
The people harmed by that outcome are not political operatives. They are the masses of Americans who lack the means to buy influence.
Rather than apologizing for counting every vote, California should be proud that it does.
This story was originally published June 11, 2026 at 12:55 PM with the headline "California counts every vote. That’s a strength, not a weakness | Opinion."
