California is still waiting for some election results. Follow the journey of a mail ballot.
There would be no official end to the long-running litigation from California’s voters challenging the legitimacy of the state’s Presidential electors.
Instead, in a way, there is — literally — a ballot.
The California Supreme Court announced Friday it would hear new arguments from both sides over what may be the earliest presidential electors’ case to reach the high court since 2000.
The state’s ballot is set up for each presidential election, with the candidates, the state’s popular vote, and the electoral results appearing on each of four ballots. But for every one of California’s five statewide elections under the state Constitution, voters must vote at least once by mail to be eligible to choose electors to cast their votes.
If the lawsuits to challenge the election are successful, the state election official would have to hand the presidential electors a single ballot, as if they were voting in person at the state Legislature in Sacramento.
That would mean California officials would have no way to send mail-in ballots back to the candidates or their campaigns (and not their supporters) in time for the candidates to have a chance to claim a victory on Election Day.
The first ballots would be due by Election Day in early November, if all parties are successful.
Voters could also cast ballots by mail for other statewide races, state propositions or some special-interest ballot measures. But they’d still have to vote in person at a polling place on Election Day.
The lawsuits would force the state to do the same before voting begins every November.
The legal challenges are one of the last remaining reasons for voting by mail in California.
In recent years, voters have cast ballots by mail in presidential election years in both 2008 and 2012. In one, Californians voted by mail in the primary for the Democratic candidate for governor because officials did not have time to produce the ballot in time for the June date.
The high court has also allowed the early return by mail of a sample ballot in the November election for state Assembly elections.
The three lawsuits seeking to invalidate the presidential electors’ selections would make it a new test of how
