It’s also just straight up false. We already knew the Dem would hold the house in 2020 on the night of the election: Democrats projected to retain control of the House of Representatives
Well, shame on me and the New York Times! Good catch.
Yep. The MAGAs will just come up with a new one- note
that trump says vote by mail is bad- except when he does it.
Wait a minute, the instructions just say “Mail your ballot so it is postmarked by election day”.
Well, yes, to an extent- that any ballots postmarked by election day should be counted. Not, as in some red states- received by Election day.
CA isnt doing things inefficiently. It is slow to count as it allows ballots postmarked by election day are counted.
Yeah, if they finished the count ten minutes after polls closed, the conspiracy theorists would still say that it taking three weeks is proof of corruption.
Quickly is not the same as efficiently. In fact, they’re often opposed to each other. In this case, training a small number of election workers, and letting them take a few weeks to finish, is more efficient than training an army of them and paying them overtime so they can finish quickly.
The instructions also say to put in your signature.
If you forget to sign your ballot, or signed it dissimilarly to your registration signature, you have more than three weeks to “cure” your ballot. Hundreds of thousands of California voters are notified after each election telling them they need to cure their ballot.
This is due to a 2018 court ruling, La Follette v. Padillap.
If I understand correctly, the court ruling did not specify how long the voter would have to cure their error. But California passed laws making the cure period much longer than any other state (currently 22 days after election day, used to be 26 per the Guardian). Comparisons with other states are here:
Ballotopedia: State Cure Periods
In my state, they check your mail ballot on receipt and if you have to cure it, they send you an email. You also can check your ballot status on a secure web page. Then you have until election day to cure it, or you can vote in person. Does anyone here think we should add 22 days to match California? I do not.
P.S. For cure statistics, see this from the last comparable cycle (2022):
Why not? What’s the problem with it, other than conspiracy theories? If the extra days for Californians have resulted in fraud, surely there must be evidence of that.
In 2008 I stupidly mailed in my ballot and didn’t sign it. I got a phone call and they told me to come over to the headquarters. I showed up with ID and they gave it to me to sign.
More votes, from procrastinating Republicans who can’t follow directions, would be counted.
But there’s a bigger issue. Making Pennsylvania vote curing, and thus vote counting times, like that of California, would make Josh Shapiro, and Pa. Democrats generally, look incompetent to our swing voters.
More votes is good, no matter where they are from. Let’s be better than that.
Because of people amplifying the message that slow is bad. If people instead focused on education instead of pandering to conspiracists, they wouldn’t look incompetent.
It wasn’t just “postmarked by election day.” It also had to be received by June 9.
Ah, but that rarely, if even would put off an election being called.
If the Republicans go back to being in favor of democratic principles, I might agree in theory.
But even then, there has to be some limit after which votes are rejected. California recently passed a law lowering the post-election-day vote cure period from 26 days to 22 days, per my earlier Guardian link. This reduced the number of counted votes. And if in the CA legislature, I would have voted for that law. MAGA or no MAGA.
Should California – and Pennsylvania – pass a law allowing the mail-in votes to be counted as they come in, like in Arizona, speeding the ultimate count, rather than waiting until election day? Would anyone around here object to that if MAGA had never happened? I think progressives would have been mildly in favor without a democracy crisis. That we are in a democracy crisis is just one more reason to do it.
Errant nonsense.
If we are in such a crisis, it is because one side wishes to demolish democracy. Any form of appeasing that side aids them in that goal. Taking an inch/getting the boot in the door and all that: it’s old wisdom for a reason.
Appeasement to fascism is just another way of saying “complying in advance” and is a significant part of how fascism gets its power before it is legally enforced. The more energy and resources they have to use to force compliance, the weaker they are in other areas.
Furthermore, to give on on such a non-issue would be suicide to Newsom’s presidential ambitions. And, in general, the Democrats being seen as weak on Trump is a net loss for Democrats.
And thus democracy.
Too late:
California Voter Foundation quoting San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2026
This idea that you never give in to bullies, or dictators, or terrorists is just not practical. On primary issues you stand firm while allowing compromises elsewhere. AFAIK that is how every European prime minister deals with Trump.
The problem is NOT that Newsom stands strong against MAGA blathering about long counts. It’s that, as my link shows, Newsom’s push for faster counting is failing.