The bills that could make vote counting faster

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Hello and welcome back to Capitol Confidential! 

Election after election, Californians brace for the same song and dance, when national figures and pundits and social media commentators lament the state’s infamously lengthy vote-counting process. Over the past several election cycles, the criticisms have taken on a new, heightened tenor, placing California in the middle of national conversations about voting. President Donald Trump recently repeated his years-long criticisms of California’s vote counting in his primetime address on elections on July 17, using the state (as he often does) as a rhetorical foil while raising doubts over election integrity and arguing for his embattled voter ID bill. 

Today we’re diving into how the conversation about vote counting speed is playing out in the Legislature. 

The California budget deal between Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers last month allocated $40 million to election offices meant to speed up ballot counting, following weeks of Republican criticism over the state’s election system.

It’s a notable investment, even if it is tens of millions short of the amount voting advocates and county clerks initially requested. Of the total funding package, $29 million is going toward staffing, technology and equipment upgrades, plus $10 million for outreach and education campaigns to encourage voters to turn in their ballots early.

But it’s not the end of the push to streamline some vote counting and administrative processes. A few bills moving through the Legislature are similarly aimed at accelerating the vote tallying, which could go into effect ahead of the November midterm. 

Two bills in particular are co-sponsored by the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit watchdog group instrumental in pushing for the election system investment package: AB2604 and SB1420. In a report out this week, the group included them in a larger set of 10 recommendations aimed at making the state’s vote counting quicker. 

SB1420, authored by Sen. Laura Richardson, D-Los Angeles, would create a new statewide voting process, allowing voters to effectively turn their mail-in ballots to in-person ballots for faster processing. While voters can already drop off their mail-in ballots at polling stations and drop boxes, they must be enclosed in envelopes and signed. Those signatures must then be checked by election officials with the signature on the ballot – a time-consuming process. 

Instead, voters would be able to drop off their ballots without the envelope, after going through an in-person check-in and brief verification process, sending it straight to the ballot box.

“Those voters that choose this voting option will have their ballots in the count on election night,” said California Voter Foundation President Kim Alexander.

This would eliminate the need for signature verification, Alexander said, avoiding the potential for voters’ signatures to be challenged by election officials checking for potential discrepancies. When that happens, voters are given the option to “cure” or fix their signature, further extending ballot counting as state law allows the process to take up to 22 days. 

While this practice is in place in some counties, it’s not a statewide process. If passed and signed by the governor, SB1420 would take effect immediately across California’s 58 counties, in time for the November election.

The other bill, AB2604, by Assembly Member Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, expands electronic signature ballot curing to all county election officials, aimed at streamlining the time-intensive process. 

Several California counties currently use text message-based curing systems, and the bill would make similar digital systems available for all counties. But it would be a voluntary system, and has a price tag attached for county election officials to employ the technology. 

A coauthor of the bill is Assembly Member Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, a former elections official. While she said she supports the bill and is largely in agreement with the California Voter Foundation’s recommendations to speed up the vote count, she also cautions against focusing squarely on making the process faster. 

“I do have a little bit of an issue of focusing on just the one question of ‘how do we count faster?’” Pellerin said. “I look at it more as: How do we count accurately, securely and without leaving eligible voters behind?”

Pellerin emphasized that elections administering and vote counting is complex, with strict rules and processes. 

“In a perfect world, if we had everything we wanted for elections offices, your count may be quicker by maybe a week, maybe, at most,” she said. “It might be just three or four days. So, I think people have higher expectations and we need to be very careful about what we're promising.”

Both bills tackle elements of the mail-in ballot, a method available to all California voters that has proven to be immensely popular. Nearly 8.6 million California voters used mail ballots in 2026, up from the roughly 7 million mail ballot voters in 2024.

Among the California Voter Foundation’s other recommendations is cutting the signature-curing timeline from 22 to 14 days and allowing counties to prioritize the counting of close races. The group also recommends improving the count of ballots remaining to be counted, so news organizations that call races can have easier access to critical data that informs their declaration of a winner. 

While advocates and lawmakers look toward the midterm elections, the secretary of state last week released its much-awaited tranche of voting data from the June primary. 

As the Chronicle’s Sara DiNatale reported, the numbers reflected a surprising uptick in the percentage of mail-in ballot rejections. 

County election officials rejected about 148,000 mail ballots from the June 2 election, bringing the total percentage of illegible mail ballots to 1.73%. That’s nearly an 11% increase from the 2024 primary, when 1.56% of the ballots were rejected, and is the highest percentage of rejected mail ballots in a state election in more than a decade. 

While primary rejection rates are generally higher than in general elections, the last time a rejection rate neared the current level was in 2014, DiNatale reported. 

Election officials rejected the majority of ballots because they were postmarked after Election Day or arrived too late. Counties also rejected a higher rate of mail ballots than in previous elections because workers could not verify, or cure, signatures on envelopes. 

The spike in ballot rejections comes amid heavy criticism of California’s election system by national and state Republicans.

California Republicans are backing a voter ID ballot measure in November, which experts largely agree could prolong — not speed up — vote-counting, DiNatale reported. 

Sen. Adam Schiff this week introduced two bills in Washington to place stricter boundaries around the use of AI-generated campaign ads and how paid posts from influencers are disclosed.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because California legislators are pursuing their own fix to the issue, which stems from a 2023 law’s loophole. 

Berman’s AB1130 requires political campaigns in California to disclose when they pay social media influencers for content promoting a candidate or party. It imposes penalties for failure to include these disclosure disclaimers when a campaign committee pays a person to post political content online in support of or opposition to candidates and measures.

It’s supported by the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

It builds on a 2023 law by Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, which required influencers to report that information out themselves by including a disclaimer that they were paid by a committee in connection with a post taking a position on a candidate or ballot measure.

On the national level, Schiff’s Promoting Authenticity with Influencer Disclaimers Act — or PAID Act — would make influencers say explicitly when they are paid by politicians, the Chronicle reported. Schiff said fraudulent AI advertising has already run rampant in races across the country, and California voters are no stranger to the burgeoning use of the technology in campaigns. 

Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV star, relied on AI videos made by his supporters in his run for office earlier this year, DiNatale reported. One depicted Mayor Karen Bass as the Joker and Pratt as Batman, fighting crime. Another used AI-generated women discussing why they would vote for Pratt after a Pilates class.

During Tom Steyer’s failed run for governor, the Chronicle found he paid at least $122,000 to influencers over the course of a month. The overall cost was probably more. Steyer’s campaign paid $2.6 million to digital strategy consulting firm Group Project, but much of the company’s reported third-party payments were for unspecified “online communications.” 

Questions? Thoughts? Interesting tidbits to share? Reach out at [email protected], and follow me on X, @KathrynPlmr.