Massive changes to California voting spark fears of Iowa-style primary chaos

[turbinetree]

POLITICS FEBRUARY 25, 2020 / 7:38 AM / UPDATED 4 HOURS AGO

Tim Reid 9 MIN READ

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - As he looks ahead to California’s March 3 Democratic primary, Neal Kelley is having sleepless nights.

Kelley is the elections chief for Orange County, part of a wave of California counties rolling out sweeping new balloting procedures affecting millions of voters in the nation’s most populous state.

He has good reason to be worried.

Memories of the chaos that plagued Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses on Feb. 3 have election officials nationwide looking to avoid similar embarrassment. Iowa’s results were delayed for days, in part because of the failure of an unproven vote-counting app.

Some mammoth California counties are unveiling their own new voting technology. They’re also eliminating thousands of polling places in the hopes that voters will make use of expanded mail-in balloting or take advantage of extended early in-person voting.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-california/massive-changes-to-california-voting-spark-fears-of-iowa-style-primary-chaos-idUSKBN20J1J7

[highplainsdem]

1. Hey, it's not like very many delegates are at stake...

[dexdah]

2. I think we can expect delayed results in CA

Mail-in ballots will take time to count. That’s how I voted. And I think delayed results will be the norm going forward. Pundits may decry this, but if all the votes are correctly counted and totaled, I’m ok with that.

[Retrograde]

3. It's not as dire as it sounds

Can't speak for Orange county, but mine - Santa Clara - is doing something similar. All registered voters got a mail-in ballot, with postage-paid envelope, and so far two separate mailings on how to return the ballots. A lot of local polling places were eliminated (including mine) but OTOH there are more early voting locations throughout the county, and a number of new voting centers (I'll have to check these out): you can now vote at any one in the county.

Of course, this depends on voters actually reading the voters' guides and additional mailings.