Explaining California's slow vote counting process

It's consider this, where every day we go deep on one big news story Today, President Trump uses California's slow vote count to revive baseless claims of election fraud. It has been almost a week since Californians went to the polls, and yet several races have yet to be called. During the wait, President Trump has brought back election fraud claims, like here, speaking this past weekend with NBC's Christ Weler on M It'sower d They're doing well again. California, it's no, they're not they're dropping fast because it's a rigged election. Let me tell you It's four days. And they aren't even close That' coming up That's how they. I know why they're doing that Because they're cheating on the election. There's what do you have evidence to support? All they have to do is look Trump leader ended that interview abruptly after Welker pressed him for evidence Your elections in this country' like a third world country.. Y elections are crooked and you're crooked. At least the press is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and CN.' one sided crooked network Let's go all a quit because I've had it. Thank you, Darling. Have a good time. M President. Let's consonsider this. With his claims about California, Trump is returning to a familiar playbook is this a preview of what the midtermss could look like From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly This message comes from Edward Jones, where they believe rich isn't about having life all figured out. It's opening yourself to all the possibilities. That's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long term planning built around you Meeting you where you are and helping you get closer to where you want to be So no matter where you're starting from or wherever life takes you, you can move forward with confidence. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together Edward Jones, member SIPC NPR's tiny desk can't come to you. I mean it's a desk, but the tiny desk contest tour can New York City join NPR's tiny desk contest winner, Cure for Paranoia at Warsaw this july ninth. It's all the NPR tiny Dk Energy minus the office furniture Get your tickets now at tinydesktour. org It was It's consider this from NPR. We are still waiting for some results from last Tuesday's primary in California. That election will determine who is on the ballot this fall in the races for governor, also Los Angeles mayor, and key congressional districts. But the state is one of the slowest in the country to count votes. and in the meantime President Trump is pushing familiar and false claims of election fraud. Joining me now to talk through Trump's claims, a slow count in California. And what all this could mean for the upcoming midterms is NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks, sayy Miles. Hi, Mary Louis. Hey, so to ask the basic question Is there any evidence of fraud with the California vote counting process? No, just like there was no evidence that there was fraud in twenty twenty. widespread fraud, I should say, even though as you heard Trump say, he still to this day claims that there was. But both that election and this one in California present situations that do lend themselves pretty easily to these sort of fraud claims. Okay. Just like Trump looked like he was ahead when the votes started coming in in twenty twenty started to be counted. a candidate in the Los Angeles Mor's race named Spencer Pratt looked like he was going to make it to the general in that state's top two primary. then As more ballots have been counted, Pratt dropped a third, which is fueling a lot of this conspiracy theorizing because Pratt had really caught on with national conservatives. But this is all pretty easily explained. In recent years, Democrats tend to vote by mail more than Republicans do, and mail ballots take longer to count than in person votes do. So we'll sometimes see something known as the Red mirage where a Republican candidate looks like they're ahead and then they fade as maail ballots are counted Okay, right't that makes sense. It does seem Unusual though, that California does take so long to count. Do we know why It's really a policy discussion. California is one of the easiest states to vote in, but some of those convenience measures come at the cost of super quick counting. The biggest one is related to how mail ballots are counted and processed. Officials need to scan these mail ballots, they need to check the signatures to make sure of identities. They have to get rid of the envelopes to make sure the ballot is ready to be counted, right All of that is fine if the ballot is returned early, but roughly a quarter of people turn in their mail ballots on election day. Stephen Richard told me. He's a former voting official from Arizona, who's now a fellow at the Cato Institute at Harvard University. That process isn't even getting started until the evening of election day or until a day or two after. And that's especially the case when we're talking about millions, legitimately millions of mailbouts that are dropped off on election day. There are a couple other policies that contribute to. California also accepts mail ballots that are postmarked by election day, but don't arrive until up until a week after. so election officials are still receiving ballots that will count even today right now. Exactly. So all of this contributes to longer vote counting. How much of an outlier is California? We've already had a lot of primaries this year, including in a lot of places where people also vote by mail. and this is the first time it's popping up. It's really it's really interesting, right? Because California is slow, but they're not actually that slow compared to some other states. You take twenty twenty four, for instance. I was emailing with MIT pololitical science professor Char Start, he assembled data set that looked at how quickly each state counted their votes in the twenty twenty four election. And he shared it with me. It took roughly ten days for California to get to ninety five percent of their votes counted. It sounds like a lot, but it took Alaska roughly the same amount and it took states like Mississippi and Utah something like eight days, so not that far off Interesting. So let me ask about what we may be learning in terms of a playbook for November and those midterms, which are coming up. California, as we noted, it has multiple competitive races, could determine who controls the House of Representatives here in Washington Might we see this dynamic play out again? I think almost certainly. I mean, the handful of races that we're talking about in California right now are close. And when that is the case