California: Bill would restore voting rights for some felons | Associated Press

A bill restoring the voting rights of convicted felons serving time in county jails is headed to California Gov. Jerry Brown. Democrats in the Senate approved the measure in a 23-13 party-line vote Tuesday. AB2466 stems from California's criminal justice realignment, which led to some people convicted of low-level felonies serving time in county jails. Supporters say civic participation can be a critical component of reducing recidivism when people return to the community.

California: San Jose recount drama tests faith in system | San Jose Mercury News

Nearly two months after the June election, the scene at the Santa Clara County registrar's office calls to mind a high-stakes blackjack game without the bright felt table or the waitresses hawking drinks. The registrar's official behind the table, Jason Mazzone, counts out the ballots from each precinct and then produces the questioned ballots, spreading them out like a dealer showing the house's hand. A team of political operatives from the San Jose District 4 council race moves forward to photograph the results. This isn't just an unprecedented second recount of votes in a stunningly close election. It's also an extraordinary clash of generations and a test of faith in the political process in a district where both the incumbent and challenger are Vietnamese-American.

California: San Francisco counters Trump rhetoric with move for non-citizen local voting | The Guardian

Politicians in San Francisco are hoping that a backlash to Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric will motivate local voters to move in the opposite direction and grant non-citizens the right to vote. An amendment to the city charter will be placed on the ballot in November to allow the parents and guardians of schoolchildren – citizen or non, documented or undocumented – to vote in school board elections, following a 10-1 vote by the board of supervisors on Tuesday. “San Francisco always goes against the grain when there are assaults on people’s liberties,” said supervisor Eric Mar, who sponsored the proposal. “This is about fairness and equity, providing an opportunity for all parents to have a voice.” This will be San Francisco voters’ third chance to approve such a measure, after unsuccessful efforts in 2004 and 2010.

California: Governor Brown vetoes measure that would have allowed cancellation of uncontested elections | Los Angeles Times

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday vetoed a bill by the late Sen. Sharon Runner (R-Lancaster) that would have allowed him to cancel an election to fill a vacancy in the Legislature if only one candidate makes the ballot. That candidate would have been declared the elected legislator, under the bill. Runner, who died earlier this month after complications from lung disease, was seeking to streamline the process for filling a legislative vacancy to save taxpayers money. She noted it cost counties $1.6 million to hold one recent special election. Runner was elected to the Senate in 2015 in a special election in which she was the only candidate on the ballot.

California: Some say it’s time California had statewide rules for provisional ballots | Los Angeles Times

Once reserved for emergency situations, provisional ballots were freely handed out across California on June 7 as a Times analysis finds they were used by more than one of every five primary voters who showed up at a polling place. But the wide use of provisional ballots has not been matched by any broad statewide oversight, with rules changing from one county to the next dictating when they are used and how elections officials decide whether to count them as valid votes. “You think it would be clean and simple,” said Donna Tarr, a resident of Rolling Hills Estates who volunteered to observe provisional ballot counting in Los Angeles County last month. … Tarr, 64, was one of several supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders who descended on county elections offices after the June election to observe how provisional ballots were processed and how many were actually counted. When she and others complained that some provisional ballots cast by unaffiliated “no party preference” voters were not being correctly counted in the Democratic presidential race, Los Angeles County elections officials quickly stepped in to fix the problem.

California: Should felons be allowed to vote from behind bars? | Los Angeles Times

Thousands of felons serving time in county jails would be allowed to vote in California elections from behind bars under a bill moving swiftly through the state Legislature despite widespread opposition from law enforcement officials. Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) introduced the measure with an aim that providing convicts the right to vote will give them a better sense of belonging to society and possibly reduce their chances of committing new crimes when released. “Civic participation can be a critical component of re-entry and has been linked to reduced recidivism,” Weber told her colleagues during a recent heated floor debate on the bill. But police chiefs and sheriffs throughout California say the proposal that passed narrowly in the state Assembly undermines a longstanding social compact: those who commit a serious crime lose not only their freedom to live in society for a time but also their right to participate in democracy.

California: State takes issue with Contra Costa elections chief over double-voting concerns | East Bay Times

The California Secretary of State's office is taking exception to the Contra Costa County elections chief's call for a change in how vote-by-mail voters are accommodated at election-day polling places, and wants to see evidence backing allegations made last week that following state rules allowed double-voting in the June 7 primary election. Secretary of State spokesman Sam Mahood said Monday his office as asked Contra Costa Registrar of Voters Joe Canciamilla to provide evidence that 113 people successfully voted twice in the primary election in that county. Canciamilla said this week he will comply.

California: This new law could dramatically change the demographics of its electorate | The Washington Post

California recently passed the New Motor Voter Act, a law designed to register eligible residents to vote by default when they use the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), unless they decline. Other states have or are considering similar laws. But because of California’s diversity and size — the 2016 population was 39.2 million and climbing — the Golden State’s law garnered special interest when it passed last fall. In a new report, we look at the law’s likely effect on the demographics of California’s electorate, and at the number of new potential voters it might register in its first year. We find that supporters are right to see great promise in the law, but how the law is implemented will be far more important than many have suggested. The new law could dramatically change California’s electorate. Emphasis on “could.”

California: It only took a month to count California’s votes. Here’s why, and why it may get better | Los Angeles Times

Well, that’s a relief. For the last four weeks, Californians have ceased to be those goofy people on the left coast. For the last four weeks, we have been the people who can’t count. And now the votes from the June 7 primary, more than 8.5 million of them, have been counted; they are due to be certified by Secretary of State Alex Padilla on Friday. The lingering question isn’t who won the presidential primaries or the Senate race; the margins in those races, and most other regional and local contests across the state, were big enough that the winners have been known almost since primary day. No, this was the question: What took you so long? The answer: It’s complicated. More than voters know. But it may be about to get faster. For voters, the most time-intensive part of balloting is deciding which candidate to like. The act of filling in the answers at a polling place or mailing it in from home doesn’t take long. But this year, several factors combined to give elections officials a giant counting headache.

California: ‘Confusing’ California primary ends on sour note | Los Angeles Times

State officials will write the June 7 primary’s final chapter this week by certifying that more than 8.5 million ballots were cast, though it’s unlikely to assuage voters or local elections officials who complained that overlapping and confusing rules left them with a lingering political hangover. “It’s disheartening because people’s expectations were so high,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation. “There were a lot of unhappy voters.” The primary’s sour ending note seems largely due to the asymmetric rules governing the presidential and statewide elections. Unlike the primary for state races – where anyone could vote for any candidate – the presidential contests were governed by a patchwork of rules that differed by political party. “The presidential primary is always the most difficult to conduct,” said Michael Vu, San Diego County’s registrar of voters. Independent voters, known in California as having “no party preference,” were allowed to vote in the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. But they were banned from voting in the Republican presidential primary.

California: One month later, California finishes its vote count, and Clinton wins | The Washington Post

It lasted longer than the 1979 conflict between China and Vietnam, but California's slow-moving count of provisional and mail-in ballots is finally over — and as expected, Hillary Clinton won. Wednesday night, after ballots were finally processed in San Mateo County, Clinton had won 2,745,293 votes to 2,381,714 for Bernie Sanders. The eventual margin was 363,579 votes, or 7.1 percentage points, closer than the 2008 primary between Clinton and Barack Obama. It was closer, too, than Sanders seemed to get on election night, when a rout bigger than any poll had suggested effectively ended the Democratic primary. Since then, Sanders added 879,671 votes to his California total; Clinton added 804,713 votes. As expected, most of the outstanding ballots left on June 7 were cast for Democratic candidates, and as expected, they broke for Sanders. (For a sense of California's scale, Sanders won more votes in the long provisional/mail-in count than he won, total, in the New York primary — 820,256 votes.)

California: Long wait expected for general election results | San Diego Union Tribune

Strong coffee — and lots of it —might be the only way to stay up late enough to see who ends up a winner in some races in November’s general election. Ballots in San Diego County will likely be an unprecedented two cards rather than one, and it will consequently take extra time to count votes. The change is driven by an unusually high number of state and local ballot measures atop the regular federal, state and local races. The implications of the seemingly simple change in ballot layout and design could have implications locally as well across the country. The outcome of races and ballot measures of national interest will be delayed by the extra time it takes to count votes from San Diego and other large California counties. Among the high-profile state measures that have captured national attention are those involving recreational marijuana, the death penalty (two separate initiatives), gun control, single-use plastic grocery bags and whether porn actors should use condoms.

California: Looking outside California for election reforms that improve turnout and save money | CAFWD

California elections are in a difficult place: fewer citizens are turning out to vote, the cost of running elections are on the rise, available funds are insufficient and the state’s voting systems are growing old and outdated. “The world is changing and voting should change too,” says Caitlin Maple, California Forward research analyst. She points out recent statewide strides in making it easier to register to vote. Online registration and the 2015 Motor Voter bill both work toward increasing the number of registered voters. Unfortunately, more registered voters hasn't necessarily translated to more voting. This year in particular saw a significant early spike of registration in January, according to Mindy Romero, the founder and director of the California Civic Engagement Project at the UC Davis Center for Regional Change. But, the actual turnout of just over 47 percent was lower than the 2008 presidential primary turnout of 59 percent.

California: Touchscreen ballots and a choice in polling stations could be the future of voting in L.A. County | Los Angeles Times

A few weeks after a primary election riddled with polling-day issues, Los Angeles County officials announced they’ve completed the first phase of a major planned overhaul of the county’s voting system. County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan envisions a future system in which, instead of being directed to designated polling stations on a single Tuesday, voters will be able to choose from hundreds of voting centers around the county during a 10-day window leading up to election day. There, instead of marking their selections with pen and paper, they will enter their selections on touch-screen ballot-marking devices, print out a paper ballot to review their selections, and feed the ballot back into the machine to be stored and counted. The county began exploring a redesign of the system in 2009. In 2014, the county Board of Supervisors approved a $15-million contract with the Bay Area design firm IDEO. The planning and design process has cost $14 million to date, Logan said.

California: Daunting ballot awaiting California voters | San Jose Mercury News

Voters are in store for another thick November ballot -- one that will offer up more statewide initiatives than IHOP has pancake dishes. With California Secretary of State Alex Padilla certifying 17 ballot measures late last week -- the most for any election since March 2000, when the state's voters grappled with 20 measures -- local residents can expect to cast upward of five double-sided pages worth of votes and receive election guides that could number more than 200 pages, said Joe Canciamilla, Contra Costa County's election chief. "The ballot is just going to be a nightmare," he said. As voters labor over questions about legalizing marijuana, eliminating the death penalty and making adult film actors wear condoms during sex, studies show that nearly 1 in 10 of them will likely give up before making it to the raft of local races, including a $3 billion BART bond measure. And many more will find themselves nixing initiatives they never had the time to grasp, said Shaun Bowler, a ballot measure expert at UC Riverside.

California: Yes, They’re Still Counting the Presidential Primary Votes | The New York Times

We like to think of California as the center of the tech universe. But, apparently, all that know-how has not helped us figure out how to run more efficient elections. Three weeks after the state’s Democratic presidential primary, half a million votes remain uncounted. The final tallies, whenever they come in, are not expected to change the result. Hillary Clinton declared victory the night of the June 7 primary, when she was up by more than 10 points. In videos, in blog posts and on social media, some supporters of Bernie Sanders are pointing to the uncounted ballots as evidence that Mr. Sanders was robbed. Long waits for final totals are not rare in California. Most of the 2.5 million votes that were not counted by June 7 were mail-in ballots that were not returned until Election Day, or even a few days after.

California: Los Angeles County unveils new voting system prototype | SCV Signal

A new voting system prototype for Los Angeles County, which will replace a system based on technology from the 1960s, was unveiled Thursday in the city of Los Angeles. “Today’s event was received with great excitement,” said Brenda Duran, a spokeswoman with the Los Angeles County Voting Systems Assessment Project, established in 2009 to create the new voting system. “L.A. County's core system that is used today has been in existence for almost 60 years. People are excited for a new system.” The new voting system will replace the current one known as “InkaVote Plus.” One of the main drawbacks of the current system: It does not allow for any technical upgrades. “Because of the technology, we knew it was time to replace it,” Project Manager Monica Flores said. She added that with limited voting system options, the county decided to design a whole new system.

California: ‘Still Sanders’ activists cling to hope of ‘flipping’ California | The Washington Post

It was billed as a "Still Sanders" rally, a way to shame CNN and the rest of the media for covering up the success of Bernie Sanders's campaign for president. It took over a street in Hollywood area of Los Angeles yesterday — coincidentally, a day that Sanders was appearing on CNN to discuss his future plans. And to the faithful, it shared new information about how Sanders, counted out in California, was gaining ground. "It is absolutely true that San Francisco has flipped for Bernie," said organizer and emcee Cary Harrison. This was not true. The consolidated city-county of San Francisco gave a victory to Hillary Clinton, of 116,359 votes to 99,594 for Sanders. As of June 24, there were no mail-in or provisional ballots left to count. Yet for a small group of Sanders diehards, California's ridiculously slow count of mail-in and provisional ballots is a source of hope, and evidence of media's failure. Since election day, three of the 58 California counties that at first seemed to vote for Clinton flipped to Sanders. A 12-point Clinton victory margin has shrunk to nine points. The relative lack of coverage here fuels events like the Still Sanders march, a look at a world in which the Vermont senator remains in the hunt for the presidency.

California: Stanislaus County supervisor expects CEO’s office will look into ballot blunder | The Modesto Bee

Ron Hurst of Modesto was as confused as other voters who participated in the June 7 primary election. Arriving at his polling place, Hurst was told by an election worker that he was an inactive voter and had to vote with a provisional ballot, which would not be counted with the election day returns. An inactive voter? Hurst, 29, said he has voted in every election since turning 18, and certainly voted for himself when he ran for a Modesto City Council seat last November. “I am disturbed by how much was wrong with this year’s election,” Hurst said. “I know some people who were registered as Democrats and were sent the Republican primary forms.” Plenty of voters from across California were confused by the primary election. The nonpartisan Election Protection voter hotline, a nationwide service, received more than 1,300 calls from voters June 7, with the complaints ranging from polls that opened late to failed voting equipment, issues with mail ballots and election workers providing inaccurate information. More than half the complaints were from California.

California: How insufficient election funding can hold back voter turnout | California Forward

A recent post-election panel held by The Future of California Elections (FoCE) to assess the state’s recent primary election revealed a number of issues. FoCE is a collaborative statewide group funded by the James Irvine Foundation and dedicated to modernizing elections and increasing voter participation. As one might expect, the voter experience varied widely across the state but a number of problems related to potential disenfranchisement were called out including some confusion among poll workers and voters. Voters who registered as No Party Preference should have had the option to vote using a cross-over ballot in the Democratic primary. But, not all poll workers offered the alternative ballot and many voters didn’t know to ask for it. In other cases, voters also had mistakenly registered for the American Independent Party – thinking they were independent of any party – rather than registering with no party affiliation. Those voters couldn’t vote for any of the major party candidates.

California: 1.4 million ballots still to be counted | KPCC

More than 7 million ballots have been counted across the state from last week's primary election. But in California, counting votes takes a long time: as of Thursday, the Secretary of State's office reported there are still about 1.4 million ballots remaining to be counted. In Los Angeles County, the latest numbers from the registrar's office shows about 350,000 ballots still need to be counted. About 1.7 million ballots were cast and counted so far. The Secretary of State has about a month to process all ballots statewide. Counties have to submit their results to the state by July 8, and the state has until July 15 to certify the statewide results. As for how many people voted, the numbers will go up as more votes are counted, but right now statewide voter turnout is tracking at about 41 percent.

California: One week later, almost 2 million California primary ballots still must be reviewed | Los Angeles Times

Elections officials across California continue to work through a stack of unprocessed ballots, now totaling more than 1.9 million potential votes in last week's local and statewide races. About 60% of the unprocessed ballots are in just a half dozen counties. By law, local officials have another three weeks to count votes, a process slowed down in part by the large number of ballots cast by mail. This is also the first year for a new state law allowing any ballot received 72 hours after election day to be counted, as long as it was postmarked in time.

California: Voter Fraud Probe In California Turns Into Voter Intimidation Boondoggle | TPM

Having police come to your home wielding weapons and asking questions about your voter registration status just days before an election sends a clear signal. That signal wasn't lost on residents of Hmong communities in rural northern California, who said police came to their doors doing just that earlier this month. They said authorities also set up a roadway checkpoint to target Hmong drivers, threatening to arrest and prosecute them if they voted illegally. Following those allegations of flagrant voter intimidation in the lead-up to Tuesday's state primary, the sheriff of Siskiyou County, where just about 43,000 people reside, told TPM his deputies played only a “minor” role in a state-led gumshoe probe into potential voter registration fraud. Sheriff Jon Lopey (pictured right) said deputies accompanied investigators to provide security in an area he described as potentially dangerous and “inundated” with what he estimated to be 2,000 illegal marijuana grow sites.

California: ‘It was just chaos’: Broken machines, incomplete voter rolls leave some wondering whether their ballots will count | Los Angeles Times

California voters faced a tough time at the polls Tuesday, with many voters saying they have encountered broken machines, polling sites that opened late and incomplete voter rolls, particularly in Los Angeles County. The result? Instead of a quick in-and-out vote, many California voters were handed the dreaded pink provisional ballot — which takes longer to fill out, longer for election officials to verify and which tends to leave voters wondering whether their votes will be counted. This year’s presidential primary race has already been one of the most bitter in recent memory. Before Tuesday’s vote, Bernie Sanders supporters accused the media of depressing Democratic turnout by calling the nomination for Hillary Clinton before polls opened in California. Those feelings haven’t gotten any less raw Tuesday as hundreds of Californians complained of voting problems to the national nonpartisan voter hotline run by the Lawyers’ Committee For Civil Rights Under Law. It’s difficult to get a sense for how widespread the problems are or how they compare to recent elections. But experts said the culprit for Tuesday’s voting problems seems to be a confluence of factors — old voting machines, a competitive election that has drawn new voters, plus complex state voting laws that can be hard for poll volunteers and voters to follow.

California: Unusual election outcomes are the new normal with California’s top-two primary rules | Los Angeles Times

For voters who spent decades – even lifetimes – trying to understand the rules for elections in California, the last four years of a new system have been a jarring jumble of candidates and choices. The seismic shock responsible: an overhaul of the rules for congressional and legislative primaries. That change, promised as a way to reform state politics, tore down election rules that had been built by political parties to give a leg up to their preferred candidates. What’s left is a system that’s far from settled, for either voters or candidates. “It has no doubt upped the uncertainty factor,” said Dave Gilliard, a Republican political consultant who managed several legislative races across California on Tuesday’s ballot. As many as two dozen races for the Legislature or Congress will pit same-party candidates against each other on Nov. 8, according to early returns from Tuesday. In most of those contests, it was outside money and the number of candidates on the primary ballot – not political strategy – that shaped the outcome.

California: Voters to have a say, sort of, over Citizens United | San Francisco Chronicle

Gov. Jerry Brown cleared the way Wednesday for Californians to vote in November on whether to urge their congressional representatives to approve a constitutional amendment repealing the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns. The state Supreme Court blocked a similar ballot measure in 2014, saying it wasn’t clear whether state law allowed advisory measures on the ballot, but ruled this January that voters could consider the proposal if the Legislature approved it again. Lawmakers, voting mostly along party lines, then passed SB254 by Sen. Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, and Brown, who could have signed or vetoed the measure, said Wednesday he had allowed it to proceed toward the ballot without his signature. Opponents said the nonbinding measure was intended mainly to boost turnout among Democratic voters.

California: Two Democrats will face off for California’s U.S. Senate seat, marking first time a Republican will not be in contention | Los Angeles Times

California voters made history on Tuesday in the race for the U.S. Senate, sending two Democrats to a November runoff and denying a Republican a spot on the fall ballot for the first time since the state’s first direct election of senators in 1914. State Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris won the largest share of the vote and the title of winner in the primary. By the end of the night, Harris led Orange County Rep. Loretta Sanchez by more than 800,000 votes, a margin of 23 percentage points. Under California’s relatively new top-two primary rules, the two Democratic women will square off on Nov. 8 – a contest that pits Harris’ strength as the party favorite against Sanchez’s potential appeal to Republicans, unaffiliated voters and Latinos. “Our unity is our strength. Our diversity is our power,” Harris told a boisterous crowd at the Delancey Street Foundation clubhouse in San Francisco on election night. “We understand that we have so many challenges as a country and we are prepared to lead.”

California: San Mateo County elections officials switch to paper ballots after electronic voting machine glitch | San Jose Mercury News

A software glitch in 140 electronic voting machines prompted San Mateo County elections officials to dole out paper ballots while technicians scrambled to fix the error Tuesday morning. The problem was coding, said Jim Irizarry, assistant chief elections officer. The agency uses the Hart InterCivic "eSlate" machine, he said. Those machines are connected to a central system, and without the proper coding, the voting machines could not communicate to the central system. The glitch "should not have occurred," Irizarry said. "When you're programming the units, you should code them properly," he said. "I believe we probably did not code those machines as well as we should have."

California: San Francisco funds open source voting | GCN

San Francisco’s open source voting project is quickly becoming a reality. Mayor Ed Lee’s proposed budget includes $300,000 towards planning and development of an open source voting system that would allow the city to own and share the software. Dominion Voting Systems, formerly known as Sequoia Voting, has provided San Francisco’s voting technology for years, but its contract with the city and county expires at the end of the year, according to KQED News. “When you rely on an outside vendor, it’s their technology, which is proprietary and confidential, and the public really doesn’t have access to the code that they’re relying on,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener, who’s running for state Senate. “It’s very ‘black box,’ so we just have to have faith that their machines are producing accurate results,” he told KQED.

California: Federal judge rejects lawsuit Bernie Sanders backers had hoped would boost his California chances | Los Angeles Times

A federal judge refused Wednesday to reopen voter registration in California ahead of next week’s presidential primary, telling a group led by backers of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders that the rights of the state’s unaffiliated voters have not been harmed. “There’s absolutely no showing of any federal violation,” said U.S. District Judge William Alsup. Alsup also denied the request that volunteers at polling places be required to tell voters about the unusual rules surrounding which political parties have opened their presidential contests to unaffiliated “independent” voters. “The citizens of California are smart enough to know what their rights are,” the judge said in a brief court hearing in San Francisco. Attorneys for the Sanders affiliated group and California’s American Independent Party, both plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said they would consider asking a federal appeals court to intervene. But they also suggested a last-minute case in state court, even though the primary is on Tuesday.