News Clips

Yet Asemanfar said her group’s Election Protection Program has observed perks with the early voting period, including the ability to fine-tune technology and fix errors without the crush of voters around. It’s also a chance for local groups to turn out the vote by holding community events around vote centers, she said. “We just need to acknowledge that it’s a new model, and a lot of voters are learning about it for the first time,” Asemanfar said. “There are a lot of conversations taking place for what the next steps might be for California.”

Jonathan Mehta Stein of Common Cause California described Riverside County as “a mess,” early in the evening, saying voters were waiting 45 minutes to two hours at about 10 locations. Voters in Riverside were still in line after 8 p.m.

Even those who were registered found themselves delayed by other problems, including an “antiquated” check-in process to ensure they hadn’t voted twice — something every county must do this year, but that only Riverside did by hand, said Jonathan Mehta Stein of California Common Cause.

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.”

CNN talked to poll monitors in CA, FL and GA and our policy manager Kiyana Asemanfar was featured observing a vote center at LA Harbor College.

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