ballots

The votes of Californians who drop their ballots in mailboxes on Nov. 4 may not be counted because of U.S. Postal Service processing delays, state officials warned Thursday.

In many parts of the state, a ballot dropped in the mail is now collected the next day, said Atty. General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber at a news event Thursday.

The change affects voters who live 50 miles or more from six regional mail processing facilities in Los Angeles, Bell Gardens, San Diego, Santa Clarita, Richmond and West Sacramento, according to Bonta’s office.

Ballots that aren’t postmarked on or before Election Day are not counted.

The large swaths of the state affected by the Postal Service changes include both rural and urban areas such as Bakersfield, the Central Valley, the Central Coast, Palm Springs and more.

The warning by state officials to drop off ballots earlier than Election Day marks a dramatic shift in California, where mail-in voting has become accessible and popular. All registered voters in California receive a vote-by-mail ballot.

“If you want your vote to count, which I assume you do, because you’re putting it in the mail, don’t put it in the mail on Election Day if you’re 50 miles from these voting centers,” Bonta said.

In the Nov. 4 special election, California voters will decide on Proposition 50, championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats to try to boost their party’s numbers in Congress by redrawing district boundaries.

The proposal came in response to a redistricting measure in Texas that seeks to increase the number of congressional Republicans at the behest of President Trump.

Postal Service representative Natashi Garvins said in an email that same-day postmarking has never been guaranteed. Garvins said that customers who want a manual postmark should visit a Postal Service location and request one at the counter.

At Thursday’s news event, state officials unveiled a large map with six circles around the mail facilities. Communities located outside the circles are affected by the postmarking change. The Secretary of State’s office wasn’t able to provide a figure for how many registered voters are affected.

Elections expert Paul Mitchell examined the map at The Times’ request.

“This is going to be a significant change for any voters who are outside of these circles that have recently voted by mail on election days,” said Mitchell, who drew the proposed congressional districts that will be before voters on Nov. 4.

Some municipalities have elections on the Nov. 4 ballot in addition to Proposition 50, Mitchell noted.

A news release from the U.S. Postal Service in February outlined some of policy changes, which appear to be part of a 10-year plan rolled out several years ago.

The Postal Service isn’t funded by the government but does receive some money from Congress for certain services.

Bonta on Thursday defended his decision to not immediately inform voters about the changes, arguing that the announcement would have gotten lost in the news cycle.

“Now is a perfect time to tell people about this,” said Bonta. “This is the voting window. This is when people are thinking about voting.”

Weber said her office was only informed “a couple of weeks ago” about the changes.

Ballots will go out to California registered voters starting Oct. 6. Voters can mail ballots, drop them off at a ballot box or take them to a vote center.

Weber on Thursday also responded to questions about faulty voter guides mailed to some voters, which mislabeled a congressional district represented by Rep. George Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce) as District 22 rather than District 27.

Weber blamed the Legislative Analyst’s Office for the error and said her office caught the mistake. About 8 million people will receive postcards informing them of the error, she said, at a cost to taxpayers of about $3 million to $4 million.

Meanwhile, Newsom on Thursday signed a pair of bills that he said will protect elections from undue influence.

Senate Bill 398 by Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Orange) makes it a crime to offer voters financial payments or the chance to win a prize in exchange for casting a ballot or registering to vote.

The new law exempts transportation incentives, such as rides to voting locations, or compensation provided by a government agency to vote.

The bill was introduced in response to Elon Musk’s America PAC announcing in 2024 that it would hold a lottery in swing states for $1 million for those who signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments.

The plan was widely criticized as an effort to drive voter registration in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump.

SB 42, also by Umberg, places a measure on the November 2026 ballot asking voters whether the state should repeal its statewide ban on public financing of campaigns.

If voters approve, California could begin considering systems where taxpayer dollars help fund candidates for public office, which supporters say diminishes the power of wealthy donors to sway the outcome of races. Charter cities are already permitted to have public financing programs, with Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Francisco among those that have chosen to do so.

Newsom said the bills are part of a broader push in California to safeguard democracy.

“Right now, our founding ideals and values are being shredded before our eyes in Washington D.C., and California will not sit idle,” Newsom said. “These new laws further protect Californians’ voices and civic participation in what makes our state and our country great.”

President Trump said Monday he would renew his assault on mail-in voting after Russia’s autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin, told him to do so at their meeting in Alaska last week.

The president provided few details, but wrote on social media that he would “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.”

Already in March, Trump had issued an executive order directing the Justice Department to “take all necessary action” to prevent mail-in ballots received after election day from being counted. The order also attempted to impose a proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration.

Those portions of the executive action has been enjoined by courts over constitutional concerns. But another provision, directing the independent U.S. Election Assistance Commission to shift its guidance on voting machines banning the use of certain bar codes and quick-response codes, has been allowed to proceed.

The U.S. Constitution states that the timing, place and manner of elections “shall be prescribed in each state” by local legislatures, and that Congress has the ability to pass laws altering state election regulations. The president is given no authority to prescribe or govern election procedures.

Trump’s action comes on the heels of his meeting with Putin in Anchorage, where the Russian leader told him that mail-in ballots led to his electoral defeat in 2020, according to the president.

The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Putin attempted to influence the last three U.S. presidential elections in Trump’s favor.

“Vladimir Putin said something — one of the most interesting things. He said, ‘Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting,’” Trump told Fox News in an interview.

Trump has criticized mail-in voting since entering politics in 2015. But his presidential campaign embraced the practice leading up to the 2024 election, encouraging his supporters — especially those affected by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina — to take advantage of mail-in voting opportunities.

“Absentee voting, early voting and election day voting are all good options,” Trump said at the time. “Republicans must make a plan, register and vote!”

ATLANTA — President Trump and other Republicans have long criticized states that take weeks to count their ballots after election day. This year has seen a flurry of activity to address it.

Part of Trump’s executive order on elections, signed in March but held up by lawsuits, takes aim at one of the main reasons for late vote counts: Many states allow mailed ballots to be counted even if they arrive after election day.

The U.S. Supreme Court last month said it would consider whether a challenge in Illinois can proceed in a case that is among several Republican-backed lawsuits seeking to impose an election day deadline for mail ballots.

At least three states — Kansas, North Dakota and Utah — passed legislation this year that eliminated a grace period for receiving mailed ballots, saying they now need to be in by election day.

Even in California, where weekslong vote counting is a frequent source of frustration and a target of Republican criticism, a bill attempting to speed up the process is moving through the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

Order asserts federal law prohibits counting late ballots

The ballot deadline section of Trump’s wide-ranging executive order relies on an interpretation of federal law that establishes election day for federal elections. He argues this means all ballots must be received by that date.

“This is like allowing persons who arrive 3 days after Election Day, perhaps after a winner has been declared, to vote in person at a former voting precinct, which would be absurd,” the executive order states.

It follows a pattern for the president, who has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of such ballots even though there is no evidence they are the source of widespread fraud. The issue is tied closely to his complaints about how long it takes to count ballots, his desire for results on election night and his false claims that overnight “dumps” of vote counts point to a rigged election in 2020, when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

But ballots received after election day, in addition to being signed and dated by the voter, must be postmarked by the U.S. Postal Service indicating they were completed and dropped off on or before the final day of voting.

Accepting late-arriving ballots has not been a partisan issue historically. States as different as California and Mississippi allow them, while Colorado and Indiana do not.

“There is nothing unreliable or insecure about a ballot that comes back after election day,” said Steve Simon, the chief election official in Minnesota, which has an election day deadline.

In his executive order, most of which is paused by the courts, Trump directs the attorney general to “take all necessary action” to enforce federal law against states that include late-arriving ballots in their final counts for federal elections. He also directs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to condition federal funding on compliance.

Trump’s rhetoric motivates Republican states

Republicans in five states have passed legislation since the 2020 election moving the mail ballot deadline to election day, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks election legislation.

Earlier this year, GOP lawmakers in Kansas ended the state’s practice of accepting mail ballots up to three days after election day, a change that will take effect for next year’s midterms. Problems with mail delivery had prompted Kansas to add the grace period in 2017.

Kansas state Sen. Mike Thompson, a Republican who chairs the committee that handles election legislation, compared the grace period to giving a football team extra chances to score after the game clock expires.

“We need this uniform end to the election just so that we know that all voters are operating on the same time frame,” he said.

A history of complaints in California

California has long been a source of complaints about the amount of time it takes for ballots to be counted and winners declared.

“The rest of the country shouldn’t have to wait on California to know the results of the elections,” U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Committee on House Administration, said during an April hearing.

He said California’s “lax election laws” were to blame for the delays.

The nation’s most populous state has the largest number of registered voters in the country, some 22.9 million, which is roughly equivalent to the number of voters in Florida and Georgia combined.

California also has embraced universal mail voting, which means every registered voter automatically receives a ballot in the mail for each election. The deadline for election offices to receive completed ballots is seven days after election day as long as they are postmarked by election day.

A survey of some 35,000 Los Angeles County voters during last fall’s election found that 40% waited until election day to return their ballot.

Election officials say the exhaustive process for reviewing and counting mail ballots combined with a large percentage of voters waiting until the last minute makes it impossible for all results to be available on election night.

California Democrats consider changes to speed the count

Under state law, election officials in California have 30 days to count ballots, conduct a post-election review and certify the results.

Dean Logan, Los Angeles County’s chief election official, told Congress in May that his team counted nearly 97% of the 3.8 million ballots cast within a week of election day in 2024. Jesse Salinas, president of the state clerks’ association, said his staff in Yolo County, near Sacramento, already works 16-hour days, seven days a week before and after an election.

Assemblyman Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) introduced legislation that would keep the state’s 30-day certification period but require county election officials to finish counting most ballots within 13 days after the election. They would be required to notify the state if they weren’t going to meet that deadline and give a reason.

“I don’t think that we can stick our heads in the sand and pretend like these conspiracies aren’t out there and that this lack of confidence doesn’t exist, in particular among Republican voters in California,” said Berman. “There are certain good government things that we can do to strengthen our election system.”

He acknowledged that many counties already meet the 13-day deadline in his bill, which awaits consideration in the state Senate.

“My hope is that this will strengthen people’s confidence in their election system and their democracy by having some of those benchmarks and just making it very clear for folks when different results will be available,” Berman said.

Cassidy writes for the Associated Press. AP writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — The vast majority of California voters support expanding access to translated ballots for people who speak limited English, an effort that would likely increase turnout, a new poll found.

That finding comes from a poll released Monday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, which conducted the survey in five languages — English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese — to capture voter sentiment in a state where more than a quarter of residents are foreign born.

The poll, conducted for the nonprofit Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, found that about 70% of California’s registered voters agreed that eligible voters who speak limited English should be provided with ballots translated into their preferred language. Support was strong among all age groups, races and ethnicities, as well as among Democrats and independent voters. Republicans were closely divided.

“I think in the country as a whole there’s a lot of debate and struggle over how inclusive a democracy we’re going to be and a lot of controversy over immigration, immigrant rights, immigrant inclusion,” said political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies. “It’s timely just thinking about the question of inclusion of different groups — who feels fully American and is allowed to feel fully American in our political system.”

Schickler and others said that, according to the latest estimates, more than 3 million registered voters in California self-identify as limited-English proficient. As of February, just under 23 million Californians were registered to vote.

Under state and federal law, California is required to provide bilingual voting assistance to Spanish speakers. Nine counties — Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara — must provide voting materials in at least one language other than English or Spanish.

Translated sample ballots and other assistance also must be made available in Spanish or other languages in counties or precincts where the state has determined at least 3% of the voting-age residents are members of a single-language minority and don’t understand English well enough to vote without assistance.

The Berkeley survey found that 82% of Democrats supported providing translated ballot materials to limited-English voters, as did 72% of voters registered as “no party preference.” Among Republicans, 45% supported providing the translated ballots, while 42% did not.

According to the poll, most California voters also favored a proposal that recently went before the state Legislature that would have allowed all limited-English-speaking communities that meet a minimum threshold in a county to receive translated versions of all voting materials.

Legislation to that effect, SB 266, proposed by Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside), failed to pass out of the Senate Appropriations Committee. A more ambitious bill to expand access to translated ballots and materials, AB 884, passed the Legislature in 2024, but was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The governor stated that while he supported expanding ballot access, the bill would have cost tens of millions of dollars not included in the budget.

Providing translated ballots to California voters with limited English proficiency is critical in a state that is home to such a diverse electorate — and is known for its complex state and local ballot measures, said Rosalind Gold of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund.

“Even folks who are very educated and native-born English speakers find trying to decipher the description of a ballot measure and what it means to be challenging,” Gold said.

Providing translated sample ballots and other election materials to voters does not go far enough, she said: The official ballots themselves, whether for Californians who vote by mail or those who vote at polling stations, should be provided in a voter’s preferred language.

“It is difficult to basically, kind of go back and forth between the ballot you’re going to be marking your choices on and a sample ballot or a facsimile ballot that’s in your native language,” Gold said. “When people can directly vote on a ballot that is in a language that they are more familiar with, it just demystifies the whole process.”

The Berkeley survey found that, among limited-English speakers who lacked access to translated election materials or were unsure if it was provided, 87% said they would be more likely to vote in future elections if they received a ballot in their preferred language. A similar number said receiving those translated ballots would make it easier for them to vote.

The poll surveyed 6,474 registered voters throughout California from June 2-6.

The election result could reshape the direction of the pro-EU and NATO member nation bordering war-torn Ukraine.

Romanians have begun casting ballots in a tense presidential election run-off that pits a pro-Trump nationalist who opposes military aid to Ukraine against a pro-European Union centrist.

Polls opened on Sunday at 7am local time (04:00 GMT) and will close at 9pm (18:00 GMT) in the high-stakes second round of the elections that will impact Romania’s geopolitical direction.

Hard-right nationalist George Simion, 38, who opposes military aid to neighbouring Ukraine and is critical of EU leadership, decisively swept the first round of the presidential election, triggering the collapse of a pro-Western coalition government. That led to significant capital outflows.

Romania’s top court annulled the first round results in December over accusations of Russian interference. The court also disqualified leading nationalist candidate Calin Georgescu, making way for Simion, who is a self-proclaimed fan of United States President Donald Trump.

Centrist Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, 55, who has pledged to clamp down on corruption and is staunchly pro-EU and NATO, is competing against Simion. He has said Romania’s support for Ukraine is vital for its own security against a growing Russian threat.

An opinion poll on Friday suggested Dan is slightly ahead of Simion for the first time since the first round in a tight race that will depend on turnout and the sizeable Romanian diaspora.

‘Battle between nationalist populism and a centralist’

Reporting from the capital, Bucharest, Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego said this election is being pitched as a battle between nationalist populism and a centralist.

“The reality is that Romania, an EU and NATO member, shares a border with war-torn Ukraine, the longest among EU members. And that also makes it one of the most vulnerable within the bloc,” she said.

Some analysts have also warned that online disinformation has been rife again ahead of Sunday’s vote.

Elena Calistru, a political analyst, told Al Jazeera: “We have to look at what is happening online. And there we have seen a lot of misinformation.”

“We have seen a lot of … coordinated inauthentic behaviour. We have seen a lot of foreign interference in our elections,” she said.

‘Pro-European president’?

The president of the country has considerable powers, not least being in charge of the defence council that decides on military aid. He will also have oversight of foreign policy, with the power to veto EU votes that require unanimity.

Daniela Plesa, 62, a public employee, told the AFP news agency in Bucharest on Friday she wanted a president “to promote the interests of the country”, complaining that “the European Union demands and demands”.

Andreea Nicolescu, 30, working in advertising, said she wished for “things to calm down a bit” and “a pro-European president”.

Rallies of tens of thousands ahead of the elections have demanded that the country maintain its pro-EU stance.

Other protests, also drawing tens of thousands, have condemned the decision to annul last year’s vote and the subsequent barring of far-right candidate Georgescu.

The cancellation was criticised by the Trump administration, and Simion has said his prime minister pick would be Georgescu, who favours nationalisation and an openness towards Russia.

The vote in Romania comes on a day when Poland also votes in the first round of the presidential election, expected to be led by pro-EU Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski and conservative historian Karol Nawrocki.

Victory for Simion and/or Trzaskowski would expand a cohort of eurosceptic leaders that already includes prime ministers in Hungary and Slovakia amid a political shift in Central Europe that could widen rifts in the EU.