New law aims to speed ballot counting in state

Doubts around the validity of election results across the nation have grown in recent years, due in large part to President Donald Trump and various members of the Republican party rejecting the results of his 2020 election loss.

Although claims around election fraud have been largely and unequivocally been disproven, their growing prevalence makes it important for states to do all they can to restore voter trust and make elections systems as airtight and transparent as possible, Berman said.

“Because of some of our policies that are really voter and democracy-friendly, it can take time to count our balance, and that time and that delay has created an opportunity for bad actors to lie,” he said. “If they don’t like the results of an election, they’ll then use this delay between Election Day and the certification of the county to say, ‘Oh, they’re bad, there’s cheating happening.’”

California’s notoriously slow vote-counting process occurs for a variety of reasons, CalMatters reported, including its use of mail-in ballots, which are counted as long as they arrive seven days after Election Day. Same-day registered voters and the process of “curing” ballots — when voters whose signature has been flagged or who didn’t fill their ballots out correctly can rectify the mistake — also slows things down.

Berman said he intentionally designed the legislation to preserve the voting accessibility that California prides itself on while also encouraging slower counties to move more quickly.

“We defer heavily to our counties to operate their election systems, and San Mateo County does a great job,” he said. “But there are some other counties across the state that almost take pride in going really unnecessarily slowly. So it’s really those counties that we’re trying to go after.”

Defending election integrity and restoring American faith in the process is integral to maintaining a healthy democracy, Berman said.

“Unfortunately, there’s been no point in my lifetime, almost 45 years, where there have been so many attacks and lies and conspiracies about our election system from elected officials and directly from the White House,” he said. “It’s shameful. It’s un-American, it’s unpatriotic, and it erodes the foundation of our democracy.”