Votebeat

Elections

How election officials fought fiction with fact

Pet videos populate Facebook all the time, but one posted during this frenzied election season stood out: A service dog named Maggie Magoo had voted by mail in Santa Cruz, its owner said. Not just that, the owner claimed Maggie was registered to vote using her microchip number as a social security number.  The story, […]

By Freddy Brewster and Katie Licari • December 2, 2020

Elections

How California moved to the future of voting during a pandemic

Fifty-four counties responded to a CalMatters election survey and many attributed the smooth election to new vote centers with savvy technology. Yet as Sacramento politicians say they want to make vote-by-mail permanent and expand vote centers, some counties are balking at costs and lack necessary infrastructure.

By Michael Lozano • December 1, 2020

Elections

How California reached historic voter turnout despite pandemic, distrust

Californians faced the naysayers and voted in historic numbers this election. CalMatters interviewed 54 of 58 county registrars and found the mail vote experiment saw few glitches, little drama and might provide a blueprint for future elections across the country.

By Lewis Griswold • November 24, 2020

Elections

A debunked theory fuels a Trump lawsuit

 Lea este artículo en español. As if permanent markers didn’t already make enough of a mess, enter #sharpiegate. With votes for Biden mounting, a group of Trump supporters showed up to a ballot counting facility in Arizona’s Maricopa County last Wednesday and cried foul. Their claim: Poll workers were encouraging voters to mark their ballots with […]

By Steven Rascón • November 10, 2020

Elections

Voting at 17? Not so fast

A proposal to give younger people a greater voice in elections was resoundingly rejected by about 55% of California voters. By some measures Proposition 18, which would have allowed 17-year-olds to vote in primary elections if they turned 18 by the next general election, should have been a shoo-in. It had the support of Governor […]

By Elena Neale-Sacks • November 6, 2020

Elections

California dramatically cut provisional ballots. Here’s how

California officials credit new vote centers for a substantial drop in time-consuming provisional ballots this election cycle.

By Lewis Griswold • November 6, 2020

Elections

California’s counters still have millions of ballots to go

California still must count 4.5 million ballots, a bigger job than what it faced two days after the election in 2016.

By Lewis Griswold • November 5, 2020

Elections

As Election Day neared, conflict in Bakersfield between Trump and BLM groups intensified

Months before Election Day, tensions had been building in Bakersfield between Black Lives Matter supporters and a group of Trump backers calling themselves the 1776 Patriots. They’ve clashed in parking lots, on sidewalks and in the road, leading to three arrests–one of a BLM protester brandishing a firearm, another of a 1776 Patriot openly carrying […]

By Freddy Brewster, Dereka Bennett and Injeong Kim • November 5, 2020

Elections

In the Bay Area, hope and anxiety

As President Trump and his supporters moved to stop the counting of mail-in votes in key battleground states yesterday, local activist groups greenlighted rallies in several Bay Area cities. Their message was simple: count every vote. Anxious, scared, but cautiously optimistic, hundreds of protesters peacefully gathered in parks and plazas in the aftermath of an […]

By Brian Howey and Steven Rascón • November 5, 2020

Elections

Prepared for the worst, California’s election went OK

California prepared for the worst but voters largely were masked and socially distanced, and unrest was limited to isolated protests.

By Lewis Griswold and Michael Lozano • November 4, 2020