Weber is open to fixing slow CA election results

California’s 2024 election will finally, officially be done by Friday, when the Secretary of State’s office certifies the results.

Leading up to that, Secretary of State Shirley Weber on Wednesday acknowledged concerns about the slow vote count in California, but stressed the need to ensure an accurate and transparent ballot counting process, reports CalMatters’ Yue Stella Yu.

The process has come under fire in recent weeks, as newly-elected state legislators were sworn in even when counties were still counting ballots. One leading candidate for state Assembly was sworn in before her race was even called. 

• Weber, in a call with reporters: “It’s not the first time that’s happened. That’s … one of the ongoing challenges we are dealing with.”

Speed must be balanced with election security and voter access, she said. “If we decided not to verify ballots and not to look at signatures, then we’d have all of those who claim we are letting any and everybody vote raising hell about voting.” 

“It’s a challenge that we face and we will continue to face it and we continue to work on it,” she said, adding: “If those of you have any good ideas and we can look at and match it with this complex system, please let us know.” 

The very last congressional contest in the country to be called, on Dec. 3, was the 13th District in California, where Democrat Adam Gray ousted Republican Rep. John Duarte. 

How close was it? Election expert Rob Pyers figured out that Gray’s margin of victory came in one precinct — at UC Merced — where he won by 220 votes just among those who registered there on Election Day on Nov. 5. 

Meanwhile, the first state contests of 2025 are already set. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday declared two specials, with the primaries on Feb. 25 and the elections on April 29: One is in Senate District 36, where Republican Janet Nguyen has resigned to join the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

The second is in Assembly District 32, where new GOP Rep. Vince Fong was re-elected because it was too late to take his name off the ballot. It’s complicated, not to mention costly, and legislators had to pass a law to fix it.

President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House is intensifying fears that information included in federal college financial aid forms will be used to assist with mass deportations — a pledge Trump has repeatedly said he’ll carry out.

As CalMatters higher education reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn explains, researchers and advocates report that students whose parents are undocumented are worried that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will use personal information from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid for immigration enforcement.

Given the risks of exposing their family to immigration agents, some students may choose not to fill out the form — and miss out on thousands of dollars in aid.

Under the Biden administration, the Department of Education does not provide student aid information to any federal immigration agency. But that could change under Trump: As one senior education official during the Obama administration put it, it’s “not much of a firewall, it is more like a picket fence.” 

While federal law also limits what the education department can share with law enforcement agencies, if it’s served a subpoena for information, it’s unclear how aggressively the department could challenge that. 

Roughly 3.3 million Californians live in mixed-status households, including 1 in 5 children under 18. For California students seeking aid for 2025-26, advocates suggest either applying for state aid first (which is due in March) and then wait and see what the Trump administration does before applying for federal aid — or forgoing federal aid altogether.

Read more about the student aid fears in Mikhail’s story.

Speaking of what changes Trump might bring, a big question mark is looming over the future of a state program that provides Medi-Cal patients with broader health services, writes CalMatters homelessness reporter Marisa Kendall.

Launched in 2022 as one of Gov. Newsom’s signature initiatives, CalAIM connects low-income Californians with behavioral health and supportive housing services. In 2023, more than 68,600 people used CalAIM to find, stay in and partly pay for housing.

But because states aren’t typically allowed to spend federal Medicaid dollars on non-traditional medical services, California needs to have federal waivers to carry out CalAIM programs — which expire at the end of 2026.

Though nothing is likely to change until then, some health care organizations and homeless service providers worry that Trump could decide to terminate the program when it’s time to renew the waivers, pare it down or cut off people from some benefits.

• Tommy Newman, vice president of public affairs for United Way of Greater Los Angeles: “CalAIM has been one of the most important and, I think, under-appreciated policies of the Newsom administration. … And the risk of going backwards on that is scary.”

Learn more about how CalAIM could change under Trump in Marisa’s story.

Biden money: Amid Trump’s pledges to claw back unspent funds authorized by 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration on Wednesday awarded California $135 million to replace diesel and gas-powered buses and trucks with electric models, writes CalMatters climate reporter Alejandro Lazo.

The money will enable 13 applicants to obtain 455 heavy-duty, zero-emission vehicles, advancing the state’s goal to ban the sale of new diesel big rigs by 2036. The South Coast Air Quality Management District received the largest chunk of money — nearly $59 million to electrify school buses and replace work trucks. Read more.

More grants for climate change: The California Energy Commission is also awarding $42 million to a Pennsylvania-based renewable energy company to build a battery storage project at a San Diego County marine base. The project is expected to be up and running by 2027 and is intended to provide electricity to the state’s power grid and backup power to the base for up to 14 days during an outage.

After record-high deaths inside California jails, the state’s new director overseeing in-custody death reviews is embarking on a “listening tour.” Find out where she’s heading first from CalMatters criminal justice reporter Nigel Duara.