Excerpts:

When it comes to mail ballots, it’s not fraud that vexes election officials. It’s human nature.

People procrastinate.

That’s a problem as California prepares amid the COVID-19 pandemic to mail a ballot to every registered voter in the state for November’s presidential election.

The ballots go out the week of Oct. 5 and have to be returned by Election Day, Nov. 3. Some people who wait until the last minute think that means they’re OK if they put it in a mailbox on that date. But that’s not the rule.

Ballots have to be postmarked by Election Day, and they have to arrive no later than 17 days after that date at the county Registrar of Voters office or they won’t get counted.

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Description

With no end in sight for the Covid-19 pandemic, the November elections are shaping up to be an unprecedented test of the nation’s voting system. So, on this edition of KCBS In Depth, as election officials surge vote by mail systems and harden polling places, we take a closer look at the effort to create a socially distanced election. Then in the second half we speak with a longtime election reform advocate about what voters need to know to make sure their votes do indeed get counted this fall. 

Guests: 

Nate Persily, a Stanford law professor, who earlier this year helped launch the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 

Kim Alexander, the president of the California Voter Foundation

Host: Keith Menconi 

(Full Audio)

Excerpts:

It’s going to be a record year for voting by mail in the U.S. election and that has raised security concerns about each step of the process.  
 
But election officials say they have systems in place to make voting by mail a success even as health concerns about voting during the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing states to expand their current vote-by-mail options.
 
“Somewhere between 90 million and 105 million ballots might come through the mail,” said Eddie Perez, global director of technology development at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit election technology organization. “If what we're seeing in other primary elections is any guide, it's probably safe to estimate that somewhere between 65% and 75% of all ballots cast in the November election might come by mail.”

Wilson Walker takes a look at the potential collision course between the disintegrating capabilities of the post office and an inevitable influx of vote-by-mail ballots in the November election.