Massive changes to California voting spark fears of Iowa-style primary chaos – By Tim Reid (Reuters) / Feb 25 2020
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – As he looks ahead to California’s March 3 Democratic primary, Neal Kelley is having sleepless nights.
Kelley is the elections chief for Orange County, part of a wave of California counties rolling out sweeping new balloting procedures affecting millions of voters in the nation’s most populous state.
He has good reason to be worried.
Memories of the chaos that plagued Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses on Feb. 3 have election officials nationwide looking to avoid similar embarrassment. Iowa’s results were delayed for days, in part because of the failure of an unproven vote-counting app.
Some mammoth California counties are unveiling their own new voting technology. They’re also eliminating thousands of polling places in the hopes that voters will make use of expanded mail-in balloting or take advantage of extended early in-person voting.
The stakes are high. With 415 delegates up for grabs – the largest haul in the country, accounting for more than 20% of the 1,991 delegates a candidate must win to secure the Democratic nomination on the first ballot – California will have considerable influence in choosing the eventual nominee. Its early primary this year will give the Golden State even more sway. Four years ago, its primary was held in June.
That also means a California-sized screw-up would dwarf the dysfunction in Iowa.
“I’m not going to sit here and say nothing can go wrong,” Kelley said. “It’s a transition to a whole new system of voting. I am getting very little sleep.”
Continue to article: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-california-insight/massive-changes-to-california-voting-spark-fears-of-iowa-style-primary-chaos-idUSKBN20J1J7
