Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.

I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.

And we're recording this today at 12.36 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, June 9th, 2026.

Today on the show, we're talking about voting in California's

primary, which ended a week ago, but we still don't have full results in several key races,

including the race for governor. At the time we're recording this podcast, Democrat Javier

Bacera is advancing to the November election, but it's not clear yet whether he will be

facing Republican Steve Hilton or Democrat

Tom Steyer in November. And President Trump is claiming that these delayed election results are

evidence of fraud. We should say there's no evidence of fraud, of course, but Miles,

remind us why California is so slow to post-election winners.

Yeah, there's kind of a couple different parts of this, but one is just administratively.

We should start with the fact that California mails, all registered voters in the state, a mail ballot.

And so most voters choose to vote by mail there.

Mail ballots take a little bit longer to process than in-person votes.

It's a case in many states, but what makes California a particular unique is the scale in which people

return those ballots on election day. And so when you think about what it takes to process a

mail ballot, things like checking a signature to verify identity, scanning the envelope to make

sure the person hasn't already voted before, even just taking the ballot out of the envelope.

A quarter of California's elector doesn't turn their mail ballots in until on election day.

So all that work can't even start until last Tuesday.

So that's one big part of it.

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