Forget election night results. Answers might take days or weeks in some L.A. races. An effort to have them ready is underway to get a look at the results, to determine whether a new election should be called.
This effort doesn’t have to wait for the results to be certified or for them to be released in numbers.
The California Supreme Court has ruled the secretary of state isn’t required to disclose the results of a statewide election when the candidates who lost the seat have sued. The ruling, announced Friday morning, was in response to a request by Attorney General Kamala Harris to the court after the November election.
“The Secretary of State, however, contends that the case is moot, that California law requires the Secretary of State to make the results of the election publicly available, and that the secretary’s inaction precludes him from doing so,” Harris wrote to the court. She is asking it to keep the case before it “until such time as the voters have had the chance to express their will, or until the legislature has responded to the voters’ will.”
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The current secretary of state, Jeff Halverson, has stated in multiple court filings that he is legally required to release the election results through the California secretary of state’s office.
“Any future election results are subject to further review as legal and constitutional issues arise,” Halverson wrote in a motion filed Friday morning.
As of Friday, election results weren’t available via the Secretary of State website, but they could be obtained by following the secretary of state’s office’s instructions:
What about the candidates?
Attorney General Harris’ office, with the help of the California Newspaper Publishers Association, will be working with the California Supreme Court on a plan to get an early look at the results of the November elections before the state election board determines how many recounts are required. The attorneys general and newspapers want an estimate of the number of votes that have been cast after a statewide election.
“We anticipate that this information can be disseminated early this month with a plan for the release in the coming days,” the attorney general’s office wrote in an email.
The attorney general’s