Voting Rights

In California, mail ballots can arrive up to 17 days after the election (though they still have to be postmarked by Nov. 3). So how to approach the evening? “Patience, patience, patience,” said Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of Common Cause California, a nonprofit focused on election transparency and democracy. “We’re trying to tell everybody that a long vote count means we’re doing everything we can to count every eligible vote,” he said. “It’s a feature, not a bug, of our democracy.”

This segment aired on the KTLA 5 Morning News on October 30, 2020.

"In California, a ballot can get to an elections office up to 17 days after Election Day and still be counted," Stein explained. "So just because you're close to Election Day, doesn't mean you have to abandon USPS as an option. You just have to make sure that your ballot is postmarked by Election Day."

Common Cause California Executive Director Jonathan Mehta Stein, who helped negotiate the plan, told VICE News that he hoped the combination of expanded voting options would help tamp down voting lines on Election Day and before, “But we can’t be certain of that” until the election happens. “We’re concerned about voters who are displaced by the COVID pandemic and voters who are displaced because of the wildfires. There are a lots of people who’ve been pushed out of their homes in 2020,” said Stein.

“We need people to understand that if it takes days or weeks to count ballots, that is a sign that we are doing everything we can to count every eligible vote," Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of California Common Cause said. "It is not a sign of fraud or manipulation. It is democracy working. It is not a sign that democracy is broken.”