Live Election Day updates: Democrats on track to sweep all statewide offices

About 7 in 10 voters want Congress to do more to provide a check against the presidency, according to the Associated Press Voter Poll.
The national poll, released Tuesday afternoon, combines surveys of registered voters with exit polls.
The poll found disapproval of President Trump with roughly 6 out of 10 voters, while more than 7 out of 10 voters disapproved of how Congress was doing its job.
– Nigel Duara

More than 1.9 million ballots have been cast in Los Angeles County, representing about 32% of registered voters, Dean Logan, the county’s registrar-recorder and county clerk said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Of those who have voted already, 1.5 million people voted by mail, and more than 387,000 people have gone in person so far.

Voting is proceeding with no issues, Logan said, despite Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ worries of federal interference.

“I’m pleased to report that so far, Election Day has been running smoothly across LA County,” Logan said. “We’ve had no reportable instances of significance.”

– Marisa Kendall

Editor’s Note: Our journalists are working through today and tonight to bring you the latest on the election. Plus, our voter guide informs millions of California voters. Thank our team with a gift to our 501(c)(3) nonprofit newsroom today. Please give.

Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t on the ballot for a statewide election for the first time since 2010, when he won his race for lieutenant governor.

He and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom cast their ballots in Marin County today.

The governor left his mark on this election with Proposition 50, the initiative he carried last year that redrew five congressional districts to favor Democrats. That was meant to neutralize President Trump’s demand that Texas redo its congressional maps to lift up Republicans. We’ll see how those maps shake out tonight.

How did Newsom vote on the 14 ballot propositions? Well, we know he opposed Prop. 40, the billionaire tax. He also endorsed Prop. 42, a billionaire-supported measure meant to block future taxes on assets and personal property. Our Jeanne Kuang filed this report on where Newsom stood on the ballot measures.

— Adam Ashton

Republican Steve Hilton appeared in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles early Tuesday afternoon in the last bit of campaigning in his long shot bid for governor.

“It doesn't matter if you're Korean, Vietnamese, Latino, Black, White, Hungarian, or from any other background,” Hilton wrote Tuesday on his Facebook account. “We're all Californians, we're all in this together, and we all want a better future for our state.”

Hilton’s campaign has focused on California’s high cost of living, hoping to convince independents, undecided voters and even some conservative Democrats to join his call for fewer business regulations and lower taxes.

He has consistently trailed Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra in polls by double digits.

—Nigel Duara

California counts votes slowly. Republicans complain about it, Democrats complain about it — even editorial boards and election analysts get in on the act.

So what’s the holdup?

CalMatters’ Maya C. Miller found out in June. The answer is: It’s a compromise.

California’s secretary of state said the vote count emphasizes accuracy and ballot access over speed.

Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, chair of her chamber’s election committee, told Miller that to speed up the vote, the state would have to return to in-person voting and significantly move up the deadlines for mailed-in ballots.

—Nigel Duara

After the federal Department of Justice announced it’s sending election monitors to Los Angeles and three other areas in California, LA Mayor Karen Bass called that plan an attempt to intimidate voters in her city.

“This is a baseless and dangerous attack from the Department of Justice on how states run their own elections and an attempt to intimidate voters into staying home,” she said in an emailed statement. “It is also a desperate effort to make Americans doubt our free and fair elections, despite no credible evidence of widespread illegal voting.”

— Marisa Kendall

Nearly a third of California ballots have been cast, according to voter data firm Political Data Inc. As of 11:15 a.m., 31% of ballots were returned. That’s about 7 million ballots returned, out of about 23 million total ballots.

That’s up slightly from the 2022 midterm election, which saw 28% voter turnout at this point. Turnout from Latino voters in particular is up, with 22% of ballots returned, compared to 16% in 2022. Turnout is also up in the Inland Empire (26% compared to 19% in 2022) and in the Los Angeles area (30% compared to 27%).

Democrats are turning out in greater numbers than Republicans. They’re also turning out in greater numbers than the last election: 35% of Democratic voters have returned their ballots, compared to 29% at this point in 2022.

— Marisa Kendall

About half of California voters think the federal government will interfere with voting today, and nearly two-thirds said they’re concerned the Trump administration will stop the vote before all ballots have been counted, according to a poll of more than 2,700 registered voters.

Among people registered as Democrats or who identified themselves as liberals politically, nearly six in ten were not confident that the federal government wouldn’t interfere with the vote in California, according to the latest poll from the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

But it’s after the vote where their confidence really drops.

Among registered Democrats, 85% said they were concerned the federal government might try to stop the vote count in the days after the election, before California and other states finish counting. One in five California Republicans also said they shared those concerns.

— Nigel Duara

Xavier Becerra, who is running for California governor, and his wife, Carolina Reyes, voted this morning before a flank of TV cameras at Belle Cooledge Community Center in Sacramento.

Speaking to reporters after he voted, Becerra said he plans to stay involved with the UCLA Voting Rights Project, where he is an adviser, until “right before I am sworn” if he wins. In that role he represents some of the plaintiffs challenging the Trump administration’s so-far unsuccessful attempt to force California election officials not to count 20,000 ballots of people the administration claims aren’t citizens.

He addressed the press in both English and Spanish, telling reporters to “get used to that.”

Asked by a Spanish-language news outlet what it meant for the child of Mexican immigrants to potentially become governor, he reflected on growing up not far from the polling place, which was in Sacramento’s South Land Park neighborhood, and seeing the Capitol during visits downtown. To be close to winning that office, he said, is the “American dream, the California dream, the dream of my parents.”

“The wonderful thing about this country is that those dreams become reality,” he said.

— CalMatters reporter Jeanne Kuang

The Department of Justice is sending about 1,000 election monitors and observers out in the field today, including in four California areas: Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and Alameda County, according to a DOJ news release. For the first time, federal monitors will be posted in all 50 states – making this the largest election monitoring effort in history.

“Election integrity has been one of the top priorities for this administration and this division,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice said in the release.

The monitors will be ensuring compliance with federal voting rights statutes, according to the release, including making sure people with disabilities are able to vote, and that there is no voter intimidation or suppression based on race, color, national origin or religion.

This news comes as democrats in California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have expressed concerns about federal interference in California’s election. Newsom and the state Democratic party are sending their own election monitors to polling locations to watch for voter suppression.

— Marisa Kendall

The Trump administration can’t sequester California ballots or threaten election workers with prosecution under a federal appellate court ruling handed down Monday, in a case that saw the federal government win and then just as quickly lose.

The Service Employees International Union sued the federal government, alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act. It requested and won a restraining order last week forbidding the federal government from sequestering more ballots and threatening local election officials with prosecution.

The government challenged that restraining order, and on Monday, it won, briefly. A three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that challenging ballots was a right of the government and “core executive (branch) function.”

“At most, (the SEIU and the other plaintiffs) fear a possibility of a future prosecution,” said the appellate court order. “ If such a prosecution is ever brought, the prosecution itself supplies the means by which any defect, vindictiveness included, can be raised and remedied.”

But a second hearing among all the 9th Circuit justices vacated that decision in a terse order handed down hours later on Monday. The decision will be reheard by the full panel.

— Nigel Duara

Happy Election Day! If you’re looking for updates about voting and results, we’ve got you covered here all day and into this evening.

First up: In-person Election Day voting has begun. Amid worries of federal interference, Gov. Gavin Newsom has said 134 election law attorneys and 1,000 volunteer poll workers will be deployed to guard against voter intimidation and suppression. Another 54 people will be manning a hotline, run by the California Democratic Party, that voters can call to report suspicious activity at the polls: 1-877-321-VOTE.

“We’re not screwing around,” Newsom said last week on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

The lawyers and poll volunteers will be in five areas: the 6th congressional district (Sacramento area), the 13th and 22nd districts (Central Valley), the 45th district (Orange and Los Angeles counties), and the 48th district (San Diego and Riverside counties), according to The Sacramento Bee.

— Marisa Kendall