It’s Election Day eve + Record voter registration + Complaint over Google’s algorithm
Happy Monday! Be sure to stay tuned to The Bee this week as we watch the election results roll in.
FIRST UP: Gov. Gavin Newsom hit the campaign trail Sunday to rally volunteers for Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in Reno. The Sacramento Bee’s Sophia Bollag caught up with him and asked him about the hand he’s played on the initiatives California voters are seeing on their ballots.
He said he’s been working behind the scenes.
“I don’t have the luxury or the freedom to spend that much time on those issues. That said, I’m fundraising for a number of those campaigns,” he said. “We are involved.”
ELECTION MONTH
Election night is teed up to be one of the most-watched and contentious events of the year.
What exactly is the big night going to look like in California?
Polls close at 8 p.m. on Nov. 3, and experts and officials say you can expect to know whether Biden or Trump wins California early on in the night, but other races may take some time.
And that is okay.
“A long vote count means we’re doing everything we can to count every eligible vote,” said Jonathan Mehta Stein of Common Cause California. “It’s a feature, not a bug, of our democracy.”
California is also expecting a record turnout, though the final numbers won’t be known for some time. Across the nation, final results may take some time to tabulate.
“No state ever has 100% of its ballots counted on election day,” said Rachael Cobb, chair of the political science and legal studies department at Suffolk University. “We get a lot of information on election night, but there’s overseas ballots that arrive late. We have wiggle room until the deadlines start kicking in.”
Before you head to the polls, be sure to check out our voter guide.
VOTER REGISTRATION HITS ALL TIME HIGH
A historic number of Californians have registered to vote this year, the Secretary of State’s office announced Friday. As of Oct. 19, a record 22,047,448 Californians were registered to vote. This represents an increase of 2,635,677 registered voters since the last Report of Registration at a similar point in a presidential election cycle (October 24, 2016).
This year, 87.87% of eligible Californians are registered to vote. This is the highest percentage of eligible citizens registered to vote heading into a General Election in the past 80 years.
“There are more voters registered in California than the number of people in the state of Florida!” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a statement on Friday. “Record registration and a historic election points towards a big voter turnout, which could also mean longer lines and wait times on Election Day. If you haven’t voted yet, I highly recommend that you consider voting early.”
More than 11 million California voters had returned their ballots as of Sunday. If you didn’t get a chance to register, have no fear, you can visit a physical polling location and sign up for same-day registration.
Don’t miss our weekend stories on some of those new voters. Kim Bojórquez connected with five Gen Z California Latinos and asked them what’s motivating them: Racism, jobs and the environment. Check out more here.
And Kate Irby makes sense of what the surge in Gen Z voters might mean for California’s closest congressional races in this story.
IS GOOGLE’S ALGORITHM BIASED AGAINST PROP 24’S ONLINE PRIVACY REGULATIONS?
Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit, progressive organization, sent a letter Friday to California Sen. Tom Umberg, chair of the Senate Elections Committee, suggesting Google had manipulated its search results to produce negative information about Proposition 24.
The measure would expand the state’s consumer data privacy laws, including provisions to allow consumers to direct businesses to not share their personal information. It would also remove the time period in which businesses can fix violations before being penalized and create the Privacy Protection Agency to enforce the state’s consumer data privacy laws.
According to the organization, searching for the measure on Google brings up a webpage to the Secretary of State’s office that lists the “cons” of the proposition, rather than the unbiased summary of the proposition
The Secretary of State’s office removed the snippets that produced the search results on Thursday, the group said, but Consumer Watchdog is still calling on the elections committee to make a formal investigation.
“It would be an extraordinary coincidence that the one measure that threatens Google’s business model – forcing it to disclose the logic behind its algorithm and prevent it from using our most sensitive information – is also the only one that includes negative propaganda in the link to a nonpartisan source,” the letter said.
Opponents of the ballot measure say Proposition 24 will weaken the state’s existing privacy laws. It is opposed by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union in California and the California GOP, which says it creates a “new, unaccountable state bureaucracy with vast power over Californians’ personal information.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“That’s the way you test, not that stuff that goes through your brain.”
- Gov. Gavin Newsom moments after getting his nostril gently swabbed at a new state-funded COVID-19 testing lab.
Best of the Bee
Lifelong Republicans may not like him, but President Donald Trump thinks they’ll show up when it matters on Election Day to stop Democrats from taking the White House. Polling might not be in the president’s favor, but his inner circle and family members firmly believe that he has the correct read on the electorate, via Francesca Chambers
Open enrollment for California health insurance coverage for 2021 started Sunday. It’s the only time of the year where all eligible Californians can sign up for quality health care coverage without needing to meet any special circumstances, said Peter V. Lee, the executive director of Covered California. Earlier this year, Lee announced that premiums statewide would remain relatively unchanged with an average increase of 0.5%, for health care policies, via Cathie Anderson
