California officials cheered a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday that allows states to continue counting mail ballots postmarked by election day but received in the days after — calling it a win for voter participation and access, including in the upcoming November midterm.
They also acknowledged delays in recent vote counting have spurred frustration, and promised to speed the process through other solutions — including by investing millions into new election infrastructure and vote processing capabilities.
Gov. Gavin Newsom — who called the court ruling a “win for voters, plain and simple” — has previously said the state should 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 levels and $750,000 for combating election misinformation.
The court decision, a loss for President Trump and other critics who contend such policies contribute to unacceptable delays in vote counting, specifically upheld a Mississippi policy to accept mail ballots received within five business days of an election.
But it also lets stand similar policies in other states — including California, which counts ballots postmarked by and received within seven days of an election.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who has long prioritized voter participation over a speedy count, called the high court’s ruling a “win for voters, for the rule of law, and for the future of our democracy.”
She said that she will “keep working to ensure every eligible Californian has the opportunity to be heard, because our democracy is strongest when every voice and vote count.”
Dean Logan, head of the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, said in a statement to The Times that the ruling “affirms what Los Angeles County voters deserve: the assurance that a ballot cast by Election Day will be counted if received within the legal timeframe established in State Law.”
“Our office will continue to provide voter education, multilingual outreach, and leverage available resources to ensure voting access for our 5.8 million registered voters,” Logan said.
Many voting rights experts agree California’s vote counting should and could be faster, but disagree with the Trump administration’s efforts to step in with policies such as election day deadlines.
In 2024, California counted more than 406,000 late-arriving mail ballots, but they represented only about 2.5% of the statewide total. Experts say California’s delayed results have far more to do with the massive influx of mail ballots that are placed in ballot drop boxes or arrive at processing facilities on or just before election day.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, said the court’s decision was a “symbolic loss” for Trump, in that the court rejected his preferred policy on mail ballots, but “doesn’t appreciably change how long it takes to count ballots” because late-arriving ballots were never the problem.
In a report published Thursday, the California Voter Foundation recommended statewide adoption of “sign, scan, and go” programs that allow elections officials to immediately process mail ballots that voters submit in person at polling centers or drop boxes.
The foundation recommended ballot curing programs that speed up the process by utilizing a secure text platform when double checking whether a ballot is legitimate when a voter’s signature doesn’t match state records.
It also urged the state to invest $35 million in a voter education campaign to encourage early ballot returns, and more than $55 million in improving counting capacity and efficiency in county elections facilities.
Trump and other conservatives had called for an end to state policies allowing late-arriving mail ballots to be counted as an overdue fix to a voting system that often can’t produce election results in close races for days after polls close, as was the case in California’s recent primary races for governor and L.A. mayor.
Trump has pointed to California’s time-consuming count as proof of widespread fraud to undermine Republican candidates, though he has never produced evidence to support that claim and Democrats have fiercely denied it.
On Monday, Trump called the high court’s decision to uphold such state policies a “tremendous loss,” and more reason to pass the Save America Act — a bill he has backed that would enforce new voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements and ban mail ballots except for military personnel, individuals suffering from illness, disability, and in other rare circumstances.
He said politicians have “no excuse” other than “CHEATING!” to oppose such measures, especially at “a time when there is a powerful Communist Movement taking place in our Country, one more dangerous than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or September 11th.”
But California leaders rejected that — saying the criticisms of mail ballots are baseless and an attempt by Trump and his allies to undermine elections in which they are poised to lose, particularly in big blue states such as California, by attempting to wrest control over voting processes that have always been the purview of states, not the federal government.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Monday that states have been “primarily responsible for regulating elections” since the nation’s founding, and his office was “pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court has respected that authority.”
“Today’s decision recognizes a basic reality: Mail delays happen. When people vote by election day, their ballots should not be discarded because of those delays,” he said.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which has oversight over federal elections, praised the high court Monday for acknowledging that nothing in federal law precludes states from counting mail ballots in the days after an election.
“Today’s decision is a victory for voting rights and a rejection of Trump’s attacks on mail and absentee voters,” Padilla said.
Liberal groups and many voting rights experts also hailed the ruling as a win for voters.
Moving up deadlines for mail ballots is just one effort in a much broader political war over voting and the rules that govern it. The U.S. Constitution generally gives states the authority to run their own elections, but the Trump administration has been trying to assert greater federal control — especially around mail ballots.
Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Postal Service to assert control over mail balloting by designing new envelopes with special bar codes that would allow the federal government to ensure ballots only go to and get returned by eligible voters. The order prompted the Postal Service to propose new rules requiring states to hand over their voter mailing lists so it could implement Trump’s directive.
In a letter to U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner on Wednesday, Democratic senators denounced the proposed rule as an “unconstitutional and illegal attempt to transform [USPS] into an election administration agency controlled by the White House and President Trump.”
In a Senate hearing the same day, Steiner said that under the new rule, the USPS would not mail the ballots of a state that refused to turn over its voter lists, but also that his agency would adhere to any court orders curtailing its implementation.
On Thursday, just such an order came down in a federal case in which California and other Democrat-led states challenged Trump’s executive order. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled that the Constitution does not grant the president “any specific powers over elections,” and blocked his order as unlawful.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who is chair of the Democratic Assn. of Secretaries of State, said states such as California were right to focus on increasing investment in their own election infrastructure rather than accepting the Trump administration’s “bad policy ideas” for speeding things up.
Newsom’s office on Monday said that is exactly what California has been doing. It pointed to laws passed by the state Legislature last year that allow election officials to begin processing mail ballots earlier and require them to finish counting ballots sooner.
