Newsom calls on election officials to count votes faster. ‘We are being tested’
Gov. Gavin Newsom wants California elections officials to count ballots faster to head off any voter-related misinformation as the June 2 primary approaches.
“Over the past decade, administering elections has grown more and more difficult and is reaching a breaking points,” Newsom wrote Monday in a letter addressed to all 58 counties’ Registrars of Voters.
He listed threats of violence against clerks and cries of voter fraud as examples.
“In the face of these challenges, we must continue building confidence in our elections and ensure that not only every vote is counted, but that every vote is trusted,” Newsom said in the letter. “We must acknowledge that the longer the voting count takes, the more mis- and disinformation spread. That means we must do all that we can to tabulate votes quickly and accurately. Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold.”
California is one of the slowest states to tally ballots, meaning the outcome of its electoral races — including those that dictate the balance of power in Congress — is often unknown for days or even weeks after Election Day.
Election offices across the state began issuing mail-in ballots on Monday to voters ahead of next month’s primary election.
In his letter, Newsom recommended election clerks take advantage of three recent laws passed last year to speed up ballot counting by halving the time allowed for counting them, lengthening the time ballots can be counted before Election Day and more regularly informing voters on ballot count updates.
“It is critical that we take full advantage of these tools to accurately count every lawfully cast ballot as quickly as possible to mitigate what are likely to be unprecedented and misleading attempts to undermine faith in the integrity of our election,” the governor wrote.
Both Democrats and Republicans have criticized the state’s glacial vote-tallying pace and said it allows election deniers to sow distrust in the democratic process, while Secretary of State Shirley Weber has defended her office as prioritizing accuracy over speed.
Last month, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican who is running for governor, seized more than 650,000 ballots to conduct his own investigation at the behest of an election deniers’ group claiming there was voter fraud in the 2025 special election. The California Supreme Court ordered him to pause his probe.
Newsom, who is considering a run for president in 2028, has also repeatedly said that he is worried the Trump administration will try to undermine faith in elections and lay the groundwork for canceling future elections. At the same time, he has not weighed in on a Republican effort to create new voter identification requirements that recently qualified for the November ballot.
Last week, Newsom blamed the MAGA movement for “gutting” the Voting Rights Act after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Louisiana’s congressional maps in a lawsuit from a group of white voters who said state laws to protect minority-majority voting districts disenfranchised them.
