ICYMI: RightCount Leaders in the Daily Caller…

“...the fact that California counts slowly does not mean votes are being stolen. It does not mean there is rampant election fraud. Anyone making those claims should be held to the evidence, and the evidence isn’t there.”

In case you missed it, former Congressmen Lou Barletta (PA) and Matt Salmon (AZ), leaders active with RightCount, have a new op-ed in today's Daily Caller examining California's prolonged vote-counting process and the consequences it has for public confidence in elections.

As election results continue to trickle in a week after California's June 2 primary, Barletta and Salmon argue that lengthy delays undermine public trust, fuel misinformation, and create avoidable uncertainty. They emphasize that slow counting is not evidence of fraud, but that dysfunctional processes can invite suspicion and erode confidence in election outcomes.

Drawing on the experiences of Pennsylvania and Arizona, the authors highlight examples of states that provide broad access to mail voting while still producing timely election results. They contend that California's current system, including its extended ballot receipt deadline, guarantees delays and leaves voters waiting weeks for final outcomes.

“The integrity of elections isn't a partisan issue. Accuracy, transparency, and timely results are goods every American should demand of their election system, red state, blue state, or anything in between.”

Read excerpts from their op-ed below.

California Knew This Was Coming. It Did Nothing.

By Lou Barletta and Matt Salmon | June 9, 2026

Days after California’s June 2 primary, the primary race for governor remains unresolved. The Los Angeles mayoral contest was unresolved for days after the primary. Several congressional races are unresolved. And by California law, they may stay that way for weeks.

We’ve seen this before. We saw it coming. And frankly, so did everyone else.

In February, the New York Times editorial board - no bastion of conservativism - published a piece headlined “California Slow Vote Counting Is a Gift to Republicans.” The board made the case plainly: California’s drawn-out counting process damages public trust in government, provides oxygen to misinformation, and produces no meaningful benefit in voter access that couldn’t be preserved through smarter design. Our colleague Jan Brewer, former governor and secretary of state of Arizona, responded in those same pages reinforcing the point. Through our work together at RightCount, a nonpartisan election confidence initiative, she wrote that voters across the political spectrum want the same thing: “elections that are accurate, transparent and resolved promptly. Prolonged uncertainty fuels distrust and gives oxygen to misinformation and conspiracy theories.”

She was right then. California’s primary just proved it again.

Let’s be direct about something: the fact that California counts slowly does not mean votes are being stolen. It does not mean there is rampant election fraud. Anyone making those claims should be held to the evidence, and the evidence isn’t there.

But, and this matters enormously, a process that is genuinely dysfunctional invites exactly that kind of charge. And California’s leaders had every opportunity to fix it before this moment arrived.

We come from battleground states - Pennsylvania and Arizona - that have systems that offer mail-voting access while maintaining basic, common-sense rules. In Arizona, mail ballots must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day to be counted. Ballot-by-mail has been available in Arizona for over two decades, and in the 2020 general election, approximately 89% of ballots cast were early ballots, so no one can argue that a hard receipt deadline suppresses participation. Pennsylvania offers no-excuse mail-in voting to every registered voter, with ballots due by 8 p.m. on Election Day. In counties with a notice-and-cure policy, voters are notified of fixable errors and given the opportunity to correct them, and in the 2024 general election, just 0.57% of mail ballots in Pennsylvania faced rejections because of common voting errors. Both states produce timely results. Neither state hands a recurring gift to those who want to sow distrust.

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Governor Newsom signed legislation last year requiring counties to count most ballots within 13 days rather than 30. But he also sent a letter to county election officials weeks before this primary essentially pleading with them to count faster, while acknowledging the state hadn’t given them the funding to do so. He told reporters: “Get your act together.” That’s not a reform. That’s a press release.

The Constitution reserves election administration to the states. We don’t believe in federal mandates telling California how to run its elections, and we’re not here to write Sacramento’s legislation. But we do believe that one-party governance comes with accountability, and the voters of California deserve leaders that are willing to look honestly at what isn’t working rather than defending the status quo as an expression of virtue.

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At RightCount, we are working to make the case that accuracy, transparency, and timely results are goods every American should demand of their election system, red state, blue state, or anything in between.

Lou Barletta is a former U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania. Matt Salmon is a former U.S. Congressman from Arizona. Both are advisors to RightCount, an initiative focused on educating the public on election outcomes.