California leaders cheer Supreme Court ballot ruling while eyeing other ways to speed count
California officials on Monday welcomed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing states to continue counting mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day but received in the days after the election, calling it a win for voter turnout and access, including during the upcoming November midterm.
They also acknowledged that delays in the final vote count had caused frustration and promised to speed up the process through other solutions, including investing millions in new election infrastructure and vote-processing capabilities.
Calling the court decision “a win for voters, plain and simple,” Gov. Gavin Newsom has previously said the state needs to be able to count ballots faster, and his latest budget includes $29 million for “increased staffing, technology and equipment upgrades, and purchases for counties,” $10 million for voter education and outreach at the state and county level, and $750,000 to combat election misinformation.
The court decision specifically upheld Mississippi’s policy of accepting mail-in ballots received within five business days of the election, amid President Trump’s loss and other critics who argued such policies contributed to unacceptable delays in vote counting.
But it also allows similar policies in other states, including California, which counts ballots that are postmarked and received within seven days of the election.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who has long prioritized voter turnout over rapid counting, called the high court’s decision “a win for voters, the rule of law, and the future of our democracy.”
He said he will “continue to work to ensure that every eligible Californian has the opportunity to have their voice heard, because our democracy is strongest when every voice and vote is counted.”
Dean Logan, Los Angeles County registrar/registrar, said in a statement to The Times that the decision “affirms what Los Angeles County voters deserve: assurance that ballots cast by Election Day will be counted if received within the legal time period established by State Law.”
“Our office will continue to provide voter education, provide multilingual support, and leverage existing resources to ensure voting access for our 5.8 million registered voters,” Logan said.
Many voting rights experts agree that vote counting in California should and could be faster, but disagree with the Trump administration’s efforts to move forward on policies such as Election Day deadlines.
More than 406,000 late-arriving mail ballots were counted in California in 2024, but they represented only about 2.5% of the statewide total. Experts say California’s delayed results have much more to do with the massive influx of mail-in ballots being placed in ballot boxes or arriving at processing facilities on or just before Election Day.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Project on Protecting Democracy at UCLA Law, said the court’s decision was a “symbolic loss” for Trump, rejecting the court’s preferred policy on mail ballots, but saying it “does not significantly change how long it takes for ballots to be counted” because late-arriving ballots have never been a problem.
In a report released Thursday, the California Voter Foundation recommended statewide adoption of “sign, scan and go” programs that would allow election officials to promptly process mail-in ballots that voters submit in person to polling places or drop boxes.
The foundation has proposed ballot redaction programs that speed up the process by using a secure text platform while double-checking that the ballot is legitimate when a voter’s signature doesn’t match state records.
He also called on the state to invest $35 million in a voter education campaign to encourage early voting and more than $55 million to increase counting capacity and efficiency at county election facilities.
Trump and other conservatives had called for an end to state policies that allow late-arriving mail ballots to be counted, as was the case in California’s recent gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral primaries, a belated fix for a voting system that often fails to produce election results in close races for days after polls close.
Trump cited California’s time-consuming count as evidence of widespread fraud aimed at undermining Republican candidates, but he offered no evidence to support that claim, and Democrats vehemently denied it.
On Monday, Trump called the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold such state policies “tremendous lossand all the more reason to pass the Save America Act; He also supported a bill that would mandate new voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements and ban mail-in voting for military personnel, people with illnesses, disabilities and other rare circumstances.
Politicians’ “DECEPTION!” He said he had “no excuse” other than that. to oppose such measures, especially “at a time when our country is experiencing a powerful Communist Movement more dangerous than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or 9/11.”
But California leaders refused; He rejected it, saying criticism of mail-in voting was unfounded and an attempt by Trump and his allies to undermine elections they stand to lose by trying to seize control over voting processes, which have always been the province of states, not the federal government, especially in big blue states like California.
California Adv. Gen. Rob Bonta said Monday that since the nation’s founding, “states have been primarily responsible for conducting elections” and that his office is “pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court has respected that authority.”
“Today’s decision recognizes a fundamental truth: Mail delays happen. When people vote right up to election day, their ballots should not be thrown away because of these delays,” he said.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which oversees federal elections, praised the high court on Monday for recognizing that nothing in federal law prevents states from counting mail ballots in the days after the election.
“Today’s decision is a victory for voting rights and a repudiation of Trump’s attacks on mail and absentee voters,” Padilla said.
Liberal groups and many voting rights experts also hailed the decision as a win for voters.
Extending deadlines for mail-in voting is just one effort in a much broader political battle over voting and the rules that govern it. The U.S. Constitution generally gives states the power to conduct their own elections, but the Trump administration is pushing for more federal control over mail-in voting in particular.
Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Postal Service to assert control over mail voting by designing new envelopes with special barcodes that would allow the federal government to ensure ballots go out and return only to eligible voters. The order prompted the Postal Service to propose new rules requiring states to turn over voter mailing lists to implement Trump’s directive.
In a letter to U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner on Wednesday, Democratic senators condemned the proposed rule as “an unconstitutional and illegal conversion attempt.” [USPS] “It has become an election administration agency controlled by the White House and President Trump.”
At a Senate hearing the same day, Steiner said that under the new rule, USPS would not only not mail ballots to a state that refuses to deliver voter lists, but his agency would comply with any court order restricting its enforcement.
That’s exactly the ruling Thursday in a federal lawsuit in which California and other Democrat-led states are challenging Trump’s executive order. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled that the Constitution does not give the president “any special authority over elections” and blocked his order as unlawful.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, chairman of the Democratic Assn. Secretaries of State said states like California were right to focus on increasing investment in their own election infrastructure rather than accepting the Trump administration’s “bad policy ideas” to speed things up.
On Monday, Newsom’s office said that’s exactly what California is doing. He pointed to laws passed by the state Legislature last year that allow election officials to process mail ballots sooner and require them to finish counting ballots sooner.
