California voting changes raise concerns for ‘Super Tuesday’
SAN FRANCISCO — Major changes to the way people vote have election advocates on edge as Californians cast ballots in a high-profile primary that was moved up from June so the state could have a bigger say in picking presidential nominees.
More than 2.7 million of 20.6 million registered voters had returned ballots in early voting as of Thursday, Secretary of State Alex Padilla said. California is among several states holding elections on “Super Tuesday,” and the state’s 416 delegates are a rich prize for the Democrats.
“We’re going into this election with record registration and a whole lot of energy,” Padilla said in a phone briefing with reporters Thursday.
California’s primary also comes amid massive changes aimed at expanding voter participation: new voting equipment, vote centers that are replacing polling places in some counties and expanded sameday voter registration.
Those changes may confuse some voters. The fear is that California will end up with a mess much larger than Iowa, where the Democratic Party could not declare a winner for several days because of problems with a new cellphone app used to collect data from caucus sites, among other blunders.
The results of competitive races, such as the presidential primary, likely won’t be known Tuesday. California accepts ballots arriving up to three days after election day and has expanded same-day voter registration, so ballot counting will continue well after Tuesday. There were more than 2 million ballots left to process after the 2016 primary.
Paul Mitchell, vice president of data firm Political Data Inc., expects turnout in California to be around 50%, roughly the same as in the 2016 primary, with most people voting Tuesday. He said there’s excitement for the Democratic presidential race, but Republicans have little reason to vote in the primary despite congressional races on the ballot.
Election observers are keeping tabs on Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous county with more than 5.5 million registered voters and an upgraded $300 million voting system, including new ballot-marking devices.
It’s also among 15 counties — up from five in 2018 — that have replaced traditional polling places with multipurpose vote centers, where people who live anywhere in the county can vote early, drop off ballots, register to vote or vote on election day.
The vote centers’ rollout last weekend was bumpy, with some opening late or not at all because supplies hadn’t arrived or workers didn’t have correct information to start new touchscreen ballot markers.
Los Angeles County is the only one of the 15 counties with vote centers that did not automatically mail ballots to all registered voters, increasing the possibility that people will have no ballot and won’t know where to go on election day.
The county has taken extra steps to educate voters about the change, says Jonathan Stein, head of the voting rights program at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus.
Still, “in a county that enormous, all of the public outreach efforts in the world are still going to fall short,” he said.