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.

California: California Can Show the Rest of of the U.S. How To Do Elections Right | CityLab

California’s June 7 primary election is fast approaching, and the state with the most registered voters in the U.S. is far from ready. For one, the list of candidates currently vying for retiring U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer’s seat is so mob-deep that it’s forcing counties to reconfigure their ballots to accommodate all the names. Meanwhile, confusion and resentment is festering among independent voters over a lack of rule uniformity and clarity regarding their right to vote in the primaries. All of this, combined with an expected voter-turnout surge, has led to lawsuits demanding that the state extend its voter registration period up to the primary election date. However, “The infrastructure's not in place" for such an extension, Orange County voter registrar Neal Kelley told the L.A. Times.

California: Varied election filing practices reveal a system struggling to catch up | Los Angeles Times

More than half of California’s counties — most of them small and rural — don’t provide online access to campaign finance records, and they say they aren’t likely to change any time soon, an assessment of county-level contribution records shows. Only 28 of the state’s 58 counties provide campaign finance information online. And of those, just 17 make the data available in formats that make it easy to search and analyze the money influencing local elections. Some counties say shifting online would be too expensive given tight budgets. Others have implemented electronic filing systems, but have not made them mandatory for candidates and committees. That means it's more difficult to determine whom local donors are, how much money they raised and for which campaigns. Counties operate independently because there is no state law requiring online filing. California accepted the first electronic filing of a campaign statement in U.S. history in 1998. Little has changed since then.

California: 1,400 ballots incorrectly mailed to San Francisco voters right before election | The San Francisco Examiner

More than 1,400 ballots of the wrong party affiliation were incorrectly mailed to San Francisco voters, the San Francisco Examiner has learned. The ballot snafu comes just a week before San Francisco voters hit the polls for the June primary election, and during the prime vote-by-mail period — critical for local races like the Democratic County Central Committee, the state Senate primary and a number of local ballot measures. The Examiner learned of the mistake from readers who sent in letters they obtained from the San Francisco Department of Elections. “A Nonpartisan ballot was mailed to you in error; this ballot did not accurately reflect your request for a Democratic Party ballot for this primary election,” reads the letter from the department, signed by John Arntz, its director.

California: Gov. Brown to decide whether voters will sound off in November on money in politics | Los Angeles Times

Lawmakers gave final approval Friday to a November ballot measure asking voters about the growing role of undisclosed donors in political campaign. If Gov. Jerry Brown approves, the measure would ask voters on Nov. 8 whether California's elected officials should work to overturn the controversial 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the controversial Citizens United case. "This is about trying to get the system under control," said state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), the author of the legislation. The Citizens United ruling in favor of a conservative nonprofit group opened the door to unlimited spending by corporations and unions in federal candidate campaigns. Much of that spending is done by nonprofit organizations that, under IRS rules, do not have to disclose their donors.

California: Hearing for California primary lawsuit set for after voting | Associated Press

A federal judge has set an Aug. 18 hearing date in a lawsuit filed by a Bernie Sanders supporter seeking to extend California’s voter registration deadline ahead of the primary election, meaning the plaintiffs likely won’t get a hearing before the state’s June 7 primary. Attorney William Simpich argued in the filing that the process for unaffiliated voters to get a presidential primary ballot – particularly those seeking to cast ballots in the Democratic primary contest between Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – was too confusing and would leave many voters disenfranchised. He said at least two counties failed to notify some voters of their right to request a ballot to vote in the Democratic, Libertarian or American Independent Party contests.

California: San Francisco city attorney slams Sanders’ backers’ voter registration suit | San Francisco Chronicle

A lawsuit by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders and a group of independent voters against election officials is just a headline-grabbing “political stunt” unsupported by any evidence, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said Tuesday. The suit “cynically aims to undermine the legitimacy of our election, and to further a political narrative that has zero basis in reality,” said Herrera, whose office represents San Francisco elections Director John Arntz in the case. The lawsuit accuses election officials of providing independent voters with misleading and confusing information about their right to vote for a partisan presidential candidate in the June 7 primary. The suit seeks to extend Monday’s voter registration deadline to election day.

California: Bernie Sanders supporters sue to have California’s voter registration extended until election day | Los Angeles Times

A federal lawsuit alleging widespread confusion over California's presidential primary rules asks that voter registration be extended past Monday's deadline until the day of the state's primary election on June 7. "Mistakes are being made," said William Simpich, an Oakland civil rights attorney who filed the lawsuit Friday. At issue is whether voters understand the rules for the presidential primary, which differ from those governing other elections in California. Unlike statewide primaries — where voters now choose any candidate, no matter the political party — the presidential contests are controlled by the parties themselves. Democrats have opened up their primary between Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to voters that have no political affiliation, known in California as having "no party preference." But the lawsuit alleges elections officials in some of California's 58 counties aren't making that clear to these unaffiliated voters. "There's mass confusion," Simpich said in an interview on Saturday night. "This is a situation that really shouts out for some uniformity."

California: Tens of thousands have left California’s American Independent Party in the last month | Los Angeles Times

A new analysis finds nearly 32,000 voters in California's American Independent Party changed their official registration and left the party in the two weeks after a Los Angeles Times investigation identified widespread confusion among the party's members. The change comes after a series of stories last month about voters who had intended to be politically independent, what's known in California as having "no party preference." A poll conducted for The Times found 73% of American Independent Party members did not know they had registered with an actual political party. Paul Mitchell, a political data specialist whose firm sells exclusive analyses of voter data to California political campaigns, worked with The Times on the stories. He conducted the new analysis for The Times on a pro-bono basis.

California: Activist lawyers sue California on voter rules, possibly boosting Bernie Sanders support | The Sacramento Bee

As Bernie Sanders supporters fear their candidate will miss out on crucial votes from independent and crossover voters in California’s June primary, civil rights lawyers filed suit Friday seeking more time for those voters to request a Democratic presidential ballot. The lawyers sued in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of an organization trying to boost turnout for Sanders in his bid against Hillary Clinton. Additional plaintiffs include two individual voters and the American Independent Party, a conservative organization on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Sanders. In the suit against Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Alameda County and San Francisco election officials, the plaintiffs contend that nonpartisan voters have received inconsistent and confusing instructions on how to vote in the June 7 presidential primary. They say thousands of voters will be disenfranchised.

California: From marijuana laws to paper bags, Californians could see up to 18 propositions on the November ballot | Los Angeles Times

California voters this fall will likely wade through the longest list of state propositions since Bill Clinton was president, a sizable batch of proposed laws that is likely to spark a record amount of campaign spending. A review of election records and interviews with almost a dozen political consultants confirms that as many as 18 propositions — from legalizing marijuana to redirecting the proceeds of a fee on paper bags — will land on the Nov. 8 statewide ballot. "I think it's overwhelming," said Cristina Uribe, state director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a national nonprofit that advocates for politically progressive ballot measures. This week marks an unofficial but closely watched deadline for backers of the fall's bumper crop of propositions. Campaigns will submit the final voter signatures gathered for initiatives, and elections officials will then need several weeks to verify those signatures. Secretary of State Alex Padilla must certify the final list by June 30.

California: San Francisco Supervisors OK ballot measure to lower SF voting age to 16 | San Francisco Chronicle

A charter amendment to lower the voting age to 16 that will appear on the November ballot would put San Francisco at the forefront of expanding voting rights at a time when some other governments around the country have implemented increasingly restrictive voting laws. “Regardless of whether this measure is approved or not, (San Francisco) is starting a trend that will happen across the country, where cities like ours will consider whether young people can vote,” Supervisor John Avalos, who championed the measure, said at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. The measure would allow people as young as 16 to vote in city elections.

California: DMV Voter Registration is more complicated than it looks | San Francisco Chronicle

Voter registration at the Department of Motor Vehicles was supposed to make democracy easier, not harder. The reality has been far more complicated. A wrinkle in the DMV’s current process has left many voters in the cold during this hotly contested primary season. As of April 1, the DMV has switched from a largely paper-based registration system to one using computer terminals. The change allows customers to complete their registration without having to fill out a separate form — but registering with a political party requires a second, separate terminal in a different room. More than a third of those who have registered at the DMV since April have not completed the questions at the separate computer terminal. The two-step process has resulted in many potential voters missing out on the chance to record their language, ballot and — crucially — party preferences. The Republican Party’s presidential primary is only open to Republican voters.

California: Registered to vote at the DMV? Check again. Many who use the new process miss a vital step two | Los Angeles Times

If you’ve visited the DMV in the last few weeks, you may have noticed that you can now complete your voter registration at the same time you renew your driver’s license — without having to fill out a separate form. But it's a little more complicated than that. Unless voters also stop to answer questions at a computer terminal in another room, they will be registered as having no party preference. Voter advocates say this two-step process could disenfranchise thousands of voters, especially those who still want to vote in the Republican Party's closed presidential primary. Since the terminals were rolled out April 1, the Department of Motor Vehicles has registered more than 14,000 voters in its offices statewide. Of those, 4,747 people — more than one-third — did not complete questions posed at the touch screens.

California: Elections are a bonanza for signature-gatherers | Associated Press

Steve Kriston is accustomed to insults from shoppers. Some tell him to get a job when he solicits signatures to qualify measures for California's ballot. This is my job, he responds. It's a banner year for paid signature-gatherers like Kriston, who came to San Diego after three months working in Orlando, Florida, on state ballot measures there. He is weighing offers to move to Missouri and Minnesota after California's season ends. The Hungarian immigrant now makes more than the $1,200 to $1,500 a week he earned as a truck driver. In California, always a hotbed for voter initiatives, sponsors are paying up to $5.50 a signature, well above the $1 to $3 in previous statewide elections. "No one has ever seen prices anywhere in this ballpark," said Steven Maviglio, a longtime political consultant in California.

California: Jerry Brown gives counties $16.3 million more for election costs | The Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Friday that directs $16.29 million to counties to help pay for expected high turnout in the June 7 presidential primary and to process a coming deluge of petitions from groups seeking to qualify November ballot measures, including one championed by the Democratic governor. Assembly Bill 120’s signing comes a few weeks after Secretary of State Alex Padilla alerted Brown to a “surge” of voter interest in the June election because of the high-profile Republican presidential primary. As they plan for that, county election officials face the prospect of trying to verifying as many as 9.4 million petition signatures, Padilla wrote the governor. Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley called the money “a huge help.” “It absolutely goes a long way to assisting us in juggling this kind of perfect storm: the initiatives colliding at the same time we’re producing ballots and tallying ballots,” said Kelley, the president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials.

California: How California’s U.S. Senate ballot could cause problems for the June 7 primary | Los Angeles Times

If elections officials could send just one message to California's 17.2 million registered voters about the U.S. Senate primary in June, it would probably be this: Read the instructions carefully. "It's not necessarily intuitive on how to properly mark this ballot," said Kammi Foote, registrar of voters for Inyo County. And a mistake could keep a ballot from counting. On primary day, the race to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer will feature 34 candidates. Only four of those candidates have received appreciable support in public polling so far, and five will appear at the first Senate debate Monday night. But the full field is larger than any single roster of statewide contenders since the colossal list of 135 candidates who ran in the 2003 special election that recalled then-Gov. Gray Davis. (To make the ballot, candidates must pay about $3,500 or collect 10,000 signatures.)

California: State’s voter registration forms don’t make sense — it’s time for the state to change them | Los Angeles Times

About 400,000 Californians who might be planning to vote in the state’s pivotal Democratic presidential primary June 7 could be in for a shock. They’ll be told, “Sorry, your vote’s no good here.” They’re getting rooked, although they primarily rooked themselves. The state also is to blame, however. It sat back, not giving a hoot, and allowed this to happen. It should have been protecting the voters. These are the Californians who carelessly signed up with the late George Wallace’s obsolete, inconsequential, far-right American Independent Party, apparently believing they were registering as an independent — small “i” — nonpartisan voter. They’ll find that the only so-called presidential candidates they can vote for in the primary are some obscure AIP members who probably couldn’t be elected local crossing guard captain

California: San Francisco examines lowering voting age and other methods to boost turnout | The Examiner

The Board of Supervisors will hold its first ever joint meeting with the Youth Commission next month to decide whether to seek voter support for lowering San Francisco’s voting age to 16 in local elections. Such a change would require an amendment to The City’s charter, which must be approved by voters. The May 3 meeting is significant for several reasons. Not only are the supervisors expected to have youth commission members sitting next to them during the meeting, but the proposal is part of a broader discussion in San Francisco about new methods to boost voter turnout, and support of the Vote16SF measure could signal a willingness to try other ideas. The City is already exploring switching to an open-source voting system, and a new city report examines other methods.

California: Are you an independent voter? You aren’t if you checked this box | Los Angeles Times

With nearly half a million registered members, the American Independent Party is bigger than all of California's other minor parties combined. The ultraconservative party's platform opposes abortion rights and same sex marriage, and calls for building a fence along the entire United States border. Based in the Solano County home of one of its leaders, the AIP bills itself as “The Fastest Growing Political Party in California." But a Times investigation has found that a majority of its members have registered with the party in error. Nearly three in four people did not realize they had joined the party, a survey of registered AIP voters conducted for The Times found. That mistake could prevent people from casting votes in the June 7 presidential primary, California's most competitive in decades. Voters from all walks of life were confused by the use of the word “independent” in the party’s name, according to The Times analysis. Residents of rural and urban communities, students and business owners and top Hollywood celebrities with known Democratic leanings — including Sugar Ray Leonard, Demi Moore and Emma Stone — were among those who believed they were declaring that they preferred no party affiliation when they checked the box for the American Independent Party.