California counties finalized their official vote tallies for the June primary this week, releasing turnout numbers amid renewed criticism from President Donald Trump and other skeptics over the state’s lengthy ballot-counting process.
Preliminary data from the California Secretary of State’s office showed statewide turnout at 40.8%. That marks an increase from 35% in the 2024 primary and 33.2% in 2022.
Still, election experts say the recent uptick does not bring participation back to levels reached in some earlier primaries since 2000, and it remains far below the pre-1980s era, when primary turnout in California routinely exceeded 40%.
The figures come despite a major expansion of mail voting pushed by California Democrats beginning in 2016, an effort billed as a way to boost participation and improve voter access. Under the system, every registered voter is mailed a ballot, and ballots can still be counted if they arrive up to seven days after Election Day, provided they are postmarked on time.
“We haven’t seen significant jumps in turnout,” Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy, told the Associated Press. “We still have very significant disparity in turnout with race and ethnicity. The numbers don’t lie.”
Some experts say the most noticeable effect of expanded mail voting has been a longer vote-counting timeline. A California Voter Foundation report released last week criticized the state for having the slowest ballot-counting process in the country and found that the share of ballots counted within two days of Election Day fell from 81% in 2004 to 66% in 2024.
“California has one of the most accessible voting systems in the world, but our long count overshadows our strengths,” said Kim Alexander, president of the foundation. “When results take weeks, it creates space for confusion and misinformation.”
Those concerns intensified last month after many Californians questioned the results when Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt’s Election Night lead disappeared in the following days as officials continued counting mail ballots that arrived after Election Day. Trump also weighed in, alleging the election was “rigged.”
The awareness that turnout is still lacking despite expanded mail voting has been going on for years. The 2024 presidential election in California saw a 71% turnout, five percentage points lower than in 2004.
The Public Policy Institute of California concluded in a 2025 study that the expanded statewide vote-by-mail law has “generally fallen short of the reform’s original goal of a larger and more representative electorate.”
Turnout is obviously affected by more than just mail access, experts noted. The reason this month’s primary had a relatively higher turnout than in recent years was due to a wide-open competitive primary, said Eric McGhee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
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“Often in a primary, turnout is low because everything is so partisan,” he told the Sacramento Bee. “So voters don’t get riled up about distinctions between candidates within parties, but we just had the first truly open gubernatorial primary in a long time.”
Regardless, California’s mail voting system may be here to stay despite Trump’s attempts to undermine it. California Republicans blasted a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing states to continue counting mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day.
The ruling could “undermine confidence in elections in California” by “giving a green light to the corrupt, anti-democratic banana republic practices that have been running rampant,” said Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton.
