Why California Is Still Counting Election Ballots, a month after rejecting Prop. 19
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen told the Santa Cruz Sentinel Tuesday that a recent court ruling that rejected a voter-approved measure meant to combat the state’s chronic voter registration fraud resulted in a spike in the number of voters whose names were on the rolls but who still hadn’t voted.
“We are certainly experiencing an uptick in the number of unregistered voters that may be registered by mistake,” Bowen told the Sentinel.
Voter fraud, however, is rarely found in the U.S.
The California secretary of state said she’s not sure when the additional voters were added to the rolls — about 1,300 since Election Day — since it’s not her responsibility to track the numbers. But she said Tuesday that the uptick is likely caused by the court battle, and she’s working to ensure that the system will catch up with the additional voters.
“We don’t need to have somebody out there trying to add to the rolls and we’re going to track them. But we need to catch them so that we can remove them and so that if they are a real voter and they should have voted, they will get the vote counted,” Bowen said.
“We’re working very closely with the [state] attorney general’s office on this and we expect we’ll have these new ballots cast by the end of the week.”
The secretary of state said that the court’s June decision was a victory for the state, since it’s easier for voters to dispute the voter registration when the dispute can be tracked and corrected easily.
But, she said, this is only the first of the court cases that will be filed, and she isn’t sure how long the judge’s ruling in this case will last.
