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"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."

All the spending — especially after 2010’s Citizens United ruling gave big corporations and unions the right to spend huge sums — rubs some people the wrong way. “So now you have a situation where, if money is speech, speech isn’t free,” said Sean McMorris of California Common Cause, an organization that has called for more transparency in elections. “You have more money, more speech.”

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.”

“A national investigation of vote by mail from 2000 to 2012 found 491 cases of mail vote fraud, which might sound like a lot until you realize that over that time period billions of votes were cast by mail successfully,” said Jonathan Meta Stein with Common Cause.

“There are systems in place to make sure that people don’t vote twice. If they’re given the opportunity to, they should absolutely not take it because they’ll be committing a felony,” said Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director for California Common Cause.