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- [00:00]
Myles Parks
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- [00:23]
Ashley Lopez
Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.
- [00:27]
Myles Parks
I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting.
- [00:29]
Mara Liasson
And and I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
- [00:33]
Ashley Lopez
And we're recording this today at 12:36pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, June 9, 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 Becerra 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.
- [01:14]
Myles Parks
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 the case in many states. But what makes California particularly 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, to even just taking the ballot out of the envelope, a quarter of California's electorate 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 the other part of it is that a couple of these races are just very close. I should just note that, that generally speaking, when elections are close, they take longer for networks to be able to project a winner. And so that is always the case in every single election cycle.
- [02:11]
Ashley Lopez
Yeah. And California structure is also interesting. They have this like nonpartisan top two system. So this could end up being two Democrats on the ballot. That's also like this weird sort of situation that California's in.
- [02:22]
Myles Parks
Totally. There's a lot of unique aspects of California's election system that Also play into this. I mean, the fact that they have, you know, if you mess up your mail ballot, you get weeks to be able to cure that ballot, to make sure your vote counts, for instance. Or they have this grace period where if your ballot is postmarked by Election Day, it can get to election officials up to a week after the fact and still be counted. So election officials are literally still receiving ballots that will count today. And so there's all these different aspects of California's election system that contribute to this slower than usual count.
- [02:52]
Mara Liasson
It sounds like California wants to make sure that it's counted every single vote correctly.
- [02:57]
Myles Parks
That's right. I mean, a lot of these things I talked about are security measures, right? Verifying signatures, verifying people haven't already voted. I mean, the fact that some of these things are security, and then some of these are just that California has made policy decisions that basically say, we are going to be one of the easiest states in the country to vote in, and we are not going to give that up just because people are really mad that it takes us a little while to count. And so then when you think kind of naturally, how can some of this get fixed? I was talking about this with Stephen Richer, who's a former election official in Arizona, and he said he'd be very surprised if a lot of these policies get changed ahead of November because this is a state that just has made a conscious effort to prioritize access.
- [03:36]
Stephen Richer
I suppose it's a matter of priorities, and that they are just very reluctant to do anything that could be perceived as rolling back any measure of convenience or access. That's a legitimate public policy position. It's not one I share, and I think it's one that we are suffering the consequences of right now.
- [04:00]
Myles Parks
Richard noted also that before the election, Governor Gavin Newsom there wrote a letter to the state's election officials that basically said, please count faster, guys. Like, it's really important. And misinformation can thrive in times of uncertainty. But, you know, the state didn't really provide more resources to election officials or change policies in any huge material way to make counting those ballots faster. And so he called those sort of requests to count faster a little bit preposterous.
- [04:28]
Ashley Lopez
Yeah, I remember doing a story about this, like, talking to lawmakers across the country. The whole goal was to make election results faster, like, 100% in pursuit of avoiding this misinformation storm that comes from, like, just counting, taking a long time, which is what we're facing right now in California. This has, like, ignited A conversation across mostly Republicans talking about baseless suspicions that this is fraud. Actually, President Trump had this exchange with NBC's Kristen Welker on Meet the Press on Sunday.
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Myles Parks
Do you think it's appropriate that they have an election and five days later they're nowhere close to picking State local
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Ashley Lopez
officials acknowledge they are slow. They're urging.
- [05:08]
Myles Parks
No, they're crooked.
- [05:08]
Ashley Lopez
They're urging the votes to be Umar. I feel like I'm in a time machine. What do you make of this?
- [05:14]
Mara Liasson
Well, look, this is Donald Trump's modus operandi. He has been working very hard for 10 years or so to convince voters that elections, especially in blue states run by Democrats, are somehow rigged against him and his party. And he's been pushing this idea. He doesn't really accept the results of an election unless he wins it. And here he's saying they're crooked with no evidence. But this is something that he's done for a long time and he's going to continue to do because it makes it easier for him to. To convince people that he has been somehow wronged in elections. He still claims that he won the 2020 election, which he did not.
- [05:58]
Ashley Lopez
One of the things that Trump has been flagging as evidence of this purported fraud is that Republicans in several races initially looked like they were winning when the first, especially election night results started coming in. But then those leads started to disappear as more mail in ballots come in. Miles, can you explain this?
- [06:14]
Myles Parks
Yeah, I mean, this is something we saw in 2020 as well, when Trump looked like he was ahead in some battleground states. And then as specifically going back to what we talked about a second ago, mail ballots, vote by mail ballots take a little bit longer to count than in person votes do. And so lately in the last few years, due to Republican misinformation about voting by mail, Republicans tend to vote in person a little bit more, and Democrats tend to use vote by mail a little bit more. What that means is that you have these scenarios where the Republican looks like they're ahead because all of these in person votes have been counted. And then as the vote by mail ballots continue to be counted, the Democrats kind of creep up. We saw this specifically in the LA mayors race this time around with a candidate named Spencer Pratt, who is President Trump's preferred candidate. He looked like he was going to make it into the general election in this top two primary. And then as the days went by, a second Democrat overtook him. And so that definitely has been fueling these conspiracy theories.
- [07:07]
Ashley Lopez
Yeah. And Mara, I also feel like the fact that California has that nonpartisan primary where everyone's on the ballot and then the top two vote getters move on to the next thing also played a role in this because there were just like a lot more Democrats who were fighting for votes, whereas it seemed like Republicans coalesced around one person. Right?
- [07:25]
Mara Liasson
Yeah, that's right. And also Democrats. There was a lot of turmoil on the Democratic side of the top two primaries. People were waiting to see who would be actually left in the race. And a lot of Democrats decided to make their decision and cast their vote at the very last minute.
- [07:38]
Ashley Lopez
Yeah. Mara, you had also mentioned that this is like a very Trumpy thing, which is to, you know, raise concerns of fraud whenever Republicans stop doing well as votes come in. Trump isn't the only Republican making these claims. This is what House Speaker Mike Johnson said on CNN yesterday.
- [07:55]
Myles Parks
Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream, it is impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.
- [08:02]
Mara Liasson
Ah, so it's impossible to prove them, but something is wrong. That's very, very Trumpian. And I think when you're Mike Johnson and you have a tiny little majority and you are in real danger of losing it, you want to cast doubt on the results as early as possible. But it's possible that Trump and Johnson are getting ready to say that the 2026 midterms was stolen from them and either the votes were counted incorrectly or there were all sorts of non citizens who voted. Now, in the past, we didn't see a huge chorus of Republicans saying that the elections were going to be rigged. It was pretty much Trump himself. You had some people like Carrie Lake who contested their loss and said that there was some kind of fraud in the election, but for the most part it was Trump. Now it seems like it's going to be the whole chorus of Republicans.
- [08:53]
Myles Parks
Well, specifically with this one, I think we're seeing every Republican jump in. We saw Elon Musk jump in. We saw Ron DeSantis, we saw, even saw Meghan McCain tweeting about this. And I do think this is an interesting political moment too, because it kind of similar to the non citizen voting thing which kind of marries the election integrity stuff with immigration policy. This marries election integrity stuff with Republicans love bashing on California. And so I think everyone is. There's a little bit of that too, where everyone kind of feels, even people who haven't gone along with Trump's full stolen election narratives can look at this and say, hey, I can score some political points here without going fully down the rabbit hole.
- [09:30]
Mara Liasson
And not just because California is blue, but because California has so many races, very closely contested House races that could determine the majority.
- [09:39]
Ashley Lopez
Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. More in a moment. Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza. With conflict unfolding in so many places, firsthand reporting has never mattered. More NPR supporters power that work. They make it possible for our journalists to go where news is happening. And supporters get perks for NPR podcasts, things like bonus episodes, archive access and more. You can sign up@plus.npr.org welcome back. And I want to get from both of you a sense of, like, how we think all of this, this back and forth about California, how this might affect midterm results come November.
- [10:21]
Myles Parks
Oh, man. I mean, it's impossible not to look at what's happened this week and immediately forecast to November. Right. I mean, every election expert I've been talking to looks at this and says basically if there is a close election where the House is only decided by a couple seats, California has four very competitive House districts there. It could take a week to know who wins in those districts. And so we are potentially looking at a fraught, even potentially dangerous time. If you think back to 2020, that's what Stephen Richer, the election official we heard from earlier, told me. Here's how he put it.
- [10:55]
Stephen Richer
I think we're going to be in for a real slog with California come November. And I think that the volume will be at least 10 times what it is right now.
- [11:08]
Myles Parks
I think we got a little spoiled by 2024. Trump won. And after the post election period, there was pretty quiet. Election officials by and large said it was a much easier election to administer than 2020 because there weren't the same kind of fraud narratives taking hold. And I, I don't know, we might be in for a rude awakening in 2026.
- [11:26]
Ashley Lopez
I mean, does that sort of give up the game here? Mara, is the situation is that Republicans are facing losses, possibly, which is why we're seeing accusations of fraud?
- [11:35]
Mara Liasson
Yes, absolutely. I mean, Republicans have done everything they can to erect structural barriers to protect themselves against these organic trends. The organic trends is that the incumbent party is doing poorly in polls. The economy is not great, gas prices too high. So they had this round of very extreme partisan gerrymandering that certainly helped them shore up their defenses. I think if they felt that they were gonna sweep the House, they wouldn't be doing this.
- [12:04]
Ashley Lopez
You know, I also think, like, it's notable, the difference in how we're talking about elections coming into 2026 versus like a year like 2020, for example, when it comes to mail in ballots, 2020, because of the pandemic, there were a lot of more voters voting in big part for the first time by mail. And there was a national conversation about, hey, it's gonna take longer to count the votes because a lot of people are gonna be voting by mail. And a lot of states have expanded their programs for this. I wonder if we hear this conversation going into 2026 as well.
- [12:34]
Myles Parks
Yeah, I mean, I think election officials are definitely gonna be continuing to preach that message. And, you know, I think one of the tough parts about 2020, from a misinformation angle, is that a lot of states change their rules very close to that election cycle, which did also lend to this idea that, you know, the system was kind of shifting all the way up until the election, and a lot of voters felt like that was for partisan gain. And so in this case, the rules, generally speaking, are pretty much set, which I think is to election officials advantage that they have all year to try to level set. That said, we're seeing it right now that in some states, vote counting still just takes a little while. And so if that underlying trend is still true, I think there's only so much election officials can do to counter the misinformation because Trump has made it very clear. I don't think we can say it enough. He's been doing this for 10 years now, since the Iowa caucuses in 2016. That's half of some voters lives. And so I don't think there's any reason to believe he's gonna stop now.
- [13:30]
Mara Liasson
What's so interesting is usually the guy who's trailing wants to keep counting, but Donald Trump usually says we shouldn't count past Election Day because, you know, he does believe in this red mirage idea that the Republican lead disappears over time because more Democratic ballots come in late, as we've just heard. But what if some Republican candidates are trailing and he wants to keep counting? I mean, that would confuse everyone.
- [13:56]
Myles Parks
I think it's also worth noting just to level set again on California, because California is the slowest state to count votes. That is true, but they aren't that much slower than a few other states, including a few red states that don't ever get talked about. I was looking at this data set that was put together by MIT political scientist Charles Stewart, where he tracked how long it took every single state in the country to get to 95% of their votes counted in 2024. Took 10 days for California a long time. Right. Took Mississippi eight days, took Utah eight days, took Alaska roughly the same amount of time as California. We're not talking about any of those other states. And so I do think there's some part of this that's true, that there are things policy wise that California could do to make their vote counting faster. But then there are some parts of this that is just pure partisanship.
- [14:40]
Ashley Lopez
I mean, speaking of Mississippi, I feel like there's another wildcard in all this that we should talk about, which is Mississippi has a case before the Supreme Court. Part of the reason they take a long time is they have a grace period for voters. They count ballots that come in after election Day. As long as they're postmarked by Election Day, that case could force Mississippi to change that policy. So I can imagine that affecting all the states you just listed because from what I understand, they all have like grace periods for voters for various reasons.
- [15:04]
Myles Parks
Right. It definitely could slightly make things faster, though. Again, you could also see a scenario where thousands potentially of voters are disenfranchised by a rule change like that, especially the closer it comes to the election if you're not able to educate the public that that rule change is happening. But California, I don't think. I don't think a rule change like that would materially change what we're seeing, because the biggest reason is that 25% of voters who drop off their mail ballots on Election Day.
- [15:28]
Ashley Lopez
Yeah, we've heard Republicans talk about California so far, which strikes me as an opening salvo. What we're going to hear coming into November, what are you expecting, Mara, to hear from Republican candidates? Do we think? Are we going to hear the drumbeat of my opponents are cheating over and over again?
- [15:44]
Mara Liasson
Well, I assume that, that you're going to hear a lot of people say what Mike Johnson does can't prove it. But I know they cheated. And especially if the House looks like it's slipping away. And yes, I do think you're going to hear in advance accusations of cheating. And I think the closer the election, the more contested it's going to be. And we're going to just have to buckle our seatbelts because there's one thing to say in advance that you think your opponent's going to cheat, then there's another thing after the election is over to say that he did cheat and then you have to prove it and then you want to recount and then there's going to be challenges.
- [16:21]
Myles Parks
I do think generally it's going to be more after the election, though, than beforehand, the way Trump does it all year round, because he. I mean, he's already in office and he clearly has not been really concerned with the pushback to politically. But NPR did an analysis in 2022 of statewide races and found that candidates running, especially for jobs that are directly related to elections like secretary of state, but also governors, have a role in certifying elections, too. When Republicans run on election denial in competitive races, they seem to underperform other Republicans on the ticket. And so you're going to have a lot of these candidates who have gotten Trump's endorsement trying to walk a really, really thin tightrope where they want to keep Trump happy with them and keep that MAGA base supporting them, and. And yet they don't wanna turn off independents who are not into this sort of stuff.
- [17:07]
Ashley Lopez
Well, I do wanna get a sense of hotspots for election fraud, conspiracy theories. Where are you guys gonna be watching?
- [17:14]
Myles Parks
I mean, I think it's everywhere. Yeah, that's what I was exactly. That's exactly what I was gonna say, Mara, is it's like, look at the Cook Political reports list of 30 something competitive districts. And that's gonna be where election administration is probably under the most scrutiny because those are probably gonna be the closest elections. Yeah.
- [17:31]
Mara Liasson
I mean, Mississippi allows people to send, as you said, send in their ballots, so long as they're postmarked by election Day, there's a grace period. But we don't really care much about Mississippi because it's not a swing state, it's not a battleground.
- [17:40]
Myles Parks
Yeah. So it's going to be those battlegrounds, I think, generally speaking. And then I hate to say it, but it's going to be like, watch Trump's Truth Social. Because the election denial movement takes its cues from President Trump, and it's this sort of circle where President Trump is picking up local reports, grassroots reports of voter fraud and things like that, and amplifying them. But, you know, by and large, everyone is taking their cues from him. And so if he decides he's focusing on Antrim County, Michigan, today, then that is where the election denial spotlight is going to be focused. And so it's going to be kind of just watching to see what pops up over the next six months.
- [18:14]
Ashley Lopez
Oh, man, this feels so far away, but also so close. 2026 midterms.
- [18:18]
Mara Liasson
Oh, boy.
- [18:19]
Ashley Lopez
All right, well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.
- [18:23]
Myles Parks
I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.
- [18:25]
Mara Liasson
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
- [18:28]
Ashley Lopez
And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.