Politics

'Why do we need to rush?' California's Lake County may have the nation's slowest elections department

Published

1 year ago

November 22, 2024

'Why do we need to rush?' California's Lake County may have the nation's slowest elections department

LAKEPORT, Calif. — Maria Valadez would like everyone to chill out.

Every election, the prickly Lake County registrar follows California’s litany of voting laws and certifies thousands of ballots by the time she is required to. And every year, people still complain.

“The state gave us a deadline, we meet the deadline,” an exasperated Valadez said from her small office in Lakeport as a handful of staffers sat at computers verifying signatures more than two weeks after election day, when they had tallied fewer than half of the votes. “I just don’t understand, why do we need to rush?”

In a state known for its slow processing of election results, Lake County, with only about 38,000 voters, is often the slowest of them all.

Ballots ready for processing at the Lake County registrar’s office in Lakeport.

For years, the rural Northern California county — known for local disputes over marijuana cultivation and several brutal wildfires — has been among the state’s last to announce votes after elections, often frustrating candidates and befuddling political pundits.

The reason appears to be a combination of factors, including an under-resourced elections budget in one of California’s smaller, lower-income counties and a desire to keep a meticulous, steady process that was instilled by trusted staff decades ago, even as technology advances.

“Elections are a lot of security, transparency and accountability. That’s what we do here. And it has been like this for all of the years I’ve worked here,” said Valadez, who was hired in 1995 and trained by the prior registrar, who was hired in 1977. “We have a lot of checks and balances. We do them as we go.”

She repeated: “We have a deadline, we meet the deadline.”

State law requires counties to finalize their official results 30 days after the election, this year by Dec. 5. Though Valadez is adamant that she’ll make it, the pace of progress is startling compared to most of the country. Shortly before midnight on election night, Lake County reported just 5,784 ballots. A few thousand more have been counted since. Yet by Thursday — 16 days after the election — Lake County still had more than 10,000 ballots left to count, according to the secretary of state.

“I’m not unsympathetic to the challenges that come with unfunded top-down mandates from Sacramento, but there is a pattern of sheer awfulness with Lake County in particular going back at least a decade and they’ve earned all the scorn coming their way,” Rob Pyers, who operates the election guide California Target Book, said on social media last week.

He said Lake County is “in the running for slowest election department worldwide.”

This year, that may not matter much. Unlike some other counties in California, where daily ballot counts are still changing results in tight races for the House of Representatives that will determine the size of Republicans’ majority in Washington, Lake County did not have many hot contests on the ballot.

Still, the slow count means residents are waiting to find out who will serve on local schools boards, the Clear Lake City Council and the county board of supervisors.

Lake County’s lag has delayed statewide outcomes before.

In the 2014 primary election, the race for state controller was razor thin. California voters had to wait a month to know who would compete in the general election as Lake County officials took their time with the final ballots even as they were barraged with phone calls from politicos feverishly refreshing their browsers for updates.

The view down a wet city street ending at a lake

It was Lake County that declared Betty Yee had edged out fellow Democrat John Perez by fewer than 500 votes and would advance. The county met its deadline. Democracy lived on.

Now, it’s a different world than when Valadez first started working in elections 30 years ago, and her department’s speed — or lack thereof — has spurred conspiracy theories like those inflamed by Donald Trump when he lost the election in 2020.

As Valadez and her staff calmly processed ballots Wednesday, an angry man from North Dakota called to inquire about what’s taking so long.

Conservatives have singled out Lake County on social media as proof that deep blue California is aiming to rig elections. The man who lives 1,600 miles east and can’t vote in Lake County suggested something nefarious was going on.

Valadez invited him to visit her office off the shore of Clear Lake, to her tightknit community where the security guard at the courthouse next door calls entrants “kiddo.” She has nothing to hide, she said.

“We take our job very seriously,” Valadez said of her small staff. “The integrity of my work is very important to me.”

Lake County Registrar Maria Valadez at work in her office in Lakeport.

California is among the slowest states to call elections not only because of its huge population, but also because of voting laws designed to increase voter participation, including sending all registered voters a ballot by mail, which can prolong when some races are called.

“California deserves all the scorn it gets for holding up House election results,” screamed a headline last week in the New York Post. The article went on:

“Hey, bud, what’s the rush? seems to be Golden State officials’ work ethic.”

Derek Tisler, who focuses on elections as counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, confirmed that Lake County is among the slowest to process ballots in the U.S. this year. But that’s OK, he said.

“We get impatient, but I think everyone would agree that at the end of the day, we want things to be accurate,” Tisler said. “That is what election officials are going to prioritize. It makes sense they’re doing things in a way that they feel confident in.”

As a wall of rain beat down this week on most of Lake County, a place that struggles with meth and opioid abuse, where 73% of public school students qualify for free and reduced-price meals, Valadez said she’s doing her best “within staffing and resource limitations.”

Jim Emenegger processes ballots at the Lake County Registrar of Voters office.

The Lake County registrar’s office has five full time-employees, and one is currently on leave. A few retirees have been added as temporary help. The county — population: 67,000 — does not have a machine to verify signatures, instead verifying them manually.

Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, said places like Lake County don’t get the same resources as bigger tourism destinations with urban centers and higher property taxes. The state does not help counties pay for elections staff or voting equipment even as it issues more mandates, she said, making local officials’ jobs harder and uneven, depending on where they live.

“I get really frustrated when I hear lawmakers complaining about how long it takes to count, because they could actually do something about it,” Alexander said. “If elections were not a chronically underfunded government service, we could have faster results.”

Valadez also pointed to voting preferences as a potential reason for the timing of the county’s results. Unlike a growing number of counties, Lake County does not offer voting centers, a hybrid model that allows voters to drop off ballots several days before the election.

Voters here prefer to vote in person at their neighborhood polling precincts and some are still getting used to receiving a ballot in the mail, Valadez said.

But even if Lake County got a boost in funding, and more voters sent their ballots in by mail early, it’s unclear if elections officials would change much of their decades-old strategy.

Diane Fridley and Jim Emenegger process ballots at the Lake County registrar's office.

Wearing a bright red pixie cut and a Carhartt flanel, Diane Fridley, 71, worked to verify votes this week at a computer in the registrar’s office in Lakeport, scrolling her mouse across the screen to identify any issues with ballots.

For more than 40 years, Fridley was the Lake County registrar. When she retired in 2019, she passed the torch to Valadez. But in between babysitting her grandchildren, Fridley comes in to help around election season.

A Lake County native, Fridley remembers when voters had to bring their birth certificates to their polling stations. She has lived through the days of hanging chads. As someone who likes to have the same breakfast every morning — a slice of apple pie — and is hypervigilant about counting ballots, all the changes have been hard, but exciting.

“Yeah, it takes us a little longer, but we dot our I’s and we cross our Ts,” she said. “We’re positive whatever totals we have are correct. I’m not saying other counties don’t do that, but we try to be perfect.”

Fridley and Valadez exchanged a knowing look.

“There’s a deadline for a reason,” Fridley said, echoing Valadez. “We always meet the deadline.”

Politics

Before-and-after satellite imagery offers a rare look at damage inside Iran

Published

8 hours ago

March 9, 2026

Press Room

Before-and-after satellite imagery offers a rare look at damage inside Iran

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Fresh satellite images give a rare aerial view of the damage across Iran after U.S.-Israeli strikes and what Tehran’s retaliation left behind across the region.

Planet Labs satellite imagery captured burning ships and damaged facilities at the Konarak base in southern Iran, as well as significant destruction at Iran’s naval headquarters in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf, reflecting the scale of the strikes on military infrastructure.

Satellite imagery from Planet Labs shows damage at Konarak naval base in southern Iran, left, and Iran’s Bandar Abbas naval headquarters in the Persian Gulf, right. (Planet Labs PBC)

Imagery from Vantor shows damage to facilities and vessels located in Iran’s Bushehr port in the Persian Gulf.

In addition to naval assets, satellite photos show a bunker at Bushehr air base hit by a strike, leaving a large crater and destroying several nearby small buildings.

More strikes targeted the Choqa Balk drone facility in western Iran.

Radar systems at the Zahedan air base in eastern Iran — near the country’s borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan — were also struck.

The two facilities are about 800 to 900 miles apart, underscoring the broad reach of the coordinated strikes.

Satellite imagery also reveals damage to aircraft on the tarmac at Shiraz air base, including scorch marks and debris around several parking areas.

Side-by-side photos showing damage to aircraft at Shiraz air base in Shiraz, Iran on March 6, 2026. (Vantor/Maxar/Getty Images)

Satellite imagery from Planet Labs shows thick smoke plumes rising above Tehran, signaling explosions and fires inside the Iranian capital.

The smoke underscores how the conflict has moved beyond isolated military sites and into the heart of Iran’s political center.

THE UNLIKELY TOOL TRUMP IS EYEING TO TACKLE RISING OIL PRICES AMID THE IRAN CONFLICT

A satellite image from Planet Labs shows a plume of smoke above Tehran, Iran, on March 1, 2026. (Planet Labs PBC)

Iran has since responded with missile and drone strikes of its own, expanding the conflict across the region.

Satellite images reveal damage to the port city of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Sharjah is the third most populous after Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

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The Jebel Ali Port, the region’s largest maritime hub, was also targeted, underscoring how the retaliation extended beyond military sites to key infrastructure.

The new satellite imagery comes on the heels of U.S.-Israeli strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several top members of the regime, triggering a succession crisis.

President Donald Trump warned on Sunday that Iran’s new leader is “not going to last long” without U.S. approval as Operation Epic Fury marches into a third week.

Amanda covers the intersection of business and politics for Fox News Digital.

Politics

Khamenei’s son is selected as Iran’s supreme leader; 7th U.S. service member killed

Published

8 hours ago

March 9, 2026

Press Room

WASHINGTON — The U.S. and Israeli war against Iran entered its ninth day Sunday with no clear path toward de-escalation, as the U.S. announced a seventh American service member had been killed and Iranian state TV reported the selection of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son as his successor.

Meanwhile, the price of oil surpassed $100 a barrel for the first time in 3½ years.

President Trump said deploying American ground troops to the Middle East remains under consideration and Iran’s foreign minister rejected calls for a ceasefire.

Trump said last week that Mojtaba Khamenei would be an “unacceptable” choice to replace his father, the 86-year-old leader who was killed on the first day of U.S. and Israeli attacks. The clerical body in charge of choosing Iran’s next supreme leader selected him anyway, state TV reported Sunday.

The younger Khamenei, a 56-year-old Shiite cleric, has never held government office, but has long been a quiet force within his father’s inner circle. As supreme leader, he will play a central role in deciding Iran’s war strategy moving forward, with the powerful paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps answering to him.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his selection.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Saturday, Trump declined to rule out the possibility of sending U.S. forces inside Iran, saying it could “possibly happen” as the conflict intensifies.

“There would have to be a very good reason,” Trump said. “I would say if we ever did that they would be so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight at the ground level.”

His remarks came ahead of another relentless day of bombings in Iran, and as desalination plants critical to civilian water supplies in the arid region came under attack on both sides of the conflict.

The United States military on Sunday announced that an American service member died Saturday night of injuries sustained March 1 in Saudi Arabia during Iran’s “initial attacks” on U.S. allies and facilities across the region, in response to U.S. and Israeli strikes. The service member was not immediately identified, pending notification of family.

In addition to the seven U.S. service members killed in the war, a National Guard soldier died Friday of a “health-related incident” in Kuwait, where he had been deployed, the military said. The cause of death was under review.

Other deaths were also reported in the region. Israel reported two of its soldiers were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon — its first military deaths of the war — while Saudi Arabia reported two people were killed and 12 wounded by a military projectile that fell in a residential area of Al Kharj.

The death toll in Iran has been difficult to nail down, but Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations on Friday put the number at more than 1,300.

Iran has said it is prepared to continue fighting the war despite sustaining heavy losses and would be ready to fight American ground troops if they set foot in the country.

“We have very brave soldiers who are waiting for any enemy who enters into our soil to fight with them, and to kill them and destroy them,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

Araghchi added that Iran is not considering a ceasefire at this time. He said the United States and Israel would first need to explain “why they started this aggression and then guarantee there would be a permanent end of the war.”

“Unless we get to that, I think we need to continue fighting for the sake of our people and our security,” he said.

Araghchi also pushed back on Trump’s demand last week that the president be involved in determining Iran’s future leadership as a condition to ending the conflict.

“We allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs. This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader,” Araghchi said. “It’s only the business of the Iranian people, and nobody else’s business.”

In addition to mounting deaths and widespread destruction, the economic toll of the war has also continued to rise, particularly in energy markets — with oil prices jumping above $100 a barrel on Sunday.

“If the war continues like this, there will be neither a way to sell oil nor have the ability to produce it,” Iran’s parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a social media post Sunday. He added that the war would affect not just the U.S., but also the rest of the world “due to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s delusions.”

Israeli strikes Sunday hit an oil storage facility in Tehran, marking what appears to be the first time a civil industrial facility has been targeted in the war. Black smoke billowed over the Iranian capital, with officials there warning of the hazardous health effects for residents.

“By targeting fuel depots, the aggressors are releasing hazardous materials and toxic substances into the air, poisoning civilians, devastating the environment, and endangering lives on a massive scale,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said on X.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that there’s a “fear premium in the marketplace” and sought to assure Americans that the soaring oil prices are a short-term problem.

“We never know exactly the time frame of this,” Wright said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But in the worst case, this is a weeks, this is not a months, thing.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the same message in an interview with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” calling the rising gas prices a “short-term disruption.”

“Ultimately taking out the rogue Iranian regime is going to be a good thing for the oil industry,” Leavitt said. “Those prices are going to come back down just like they have over the course of the past year, because of President Trump’s American energy dominance agenda.”

The strike on the oil storage facility came as Netanyahu promised “many surprises” for the next phase of the conflict.

Israel also claimed Sunday to have destroyed the Tehran headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard air force, which it said operated Iran’s “ballistic missile command, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) array, and other air force units.” It also said it had killed five top commanders in the Revolutionary Guard who were “hiding in a civilian hotel” in central Beirut, Lebanon.

Crucial civilian infrastructure also came under attack, on both sides of the conflict.

Bahrain denounced what it said was an Iranian attack on one of its desalination plants — facilities that supply water to millions of people in the parched deserts of the Persian Gulf. Araghchi said a U.S. airstrike had damaged an Iranian desalination plan on Qeshm Island first.

“Attacking Iran’s infrastructure is a dangerous move with grave consequences. The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,” Araghchi wrote on X.

The United States has also come under scrutiny after evidence suggested that an American strike was probably responsible for an explosion at an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 165 people, most of them children.

Trump administration officials have said that the matter is under investigation and that no determination has been made as to who was responsible for the strike. But on Saturday, Trump said Iran was to blame for the explosion.

“It was done by Iran,” he told reporters. “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”

Asked Sunday whether Iran had any evidence that the strike was conducted by the Americans, Araghchi said that it had to have been either the U.S. or Israeli military and that Trump’s suggestion that Iran was responsible for the attack was “funny.”

“It is our school, these are our students and our girls, and they are attacked by an American fighter, a jet fighter, and they have been killed. Why [is] Iran responsible?” Araghchi said.

Other world leaders and nations have called for a halt to fighting and added their own estimates to its toll.

Lebanon said more than half a million people have been displaced by the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he had spoken with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Sunday, and urged him to stop strikes in the region. Macron is the first Western leader to speak with Pezeshkian since the war began, the Associated Press reported.

Pope Leo XIV wrote on X on Sunday that reports out of Iran and the wider Middle East “continue to cause deep dismay and raise the fear that the conflict will expand, and that other countries in the region, including dear Lebanon, may once again sink into instability.”

He asked the world to pray “for the roar of bombs to cease, weapons to fall silent, and space to open for dialogue, in which people’s voices may be heard.”

Politics

Trump vows block on signing new laws until SAVE America Act passes Senate

Published

20 hours ago

March 8, 2026

Press Room

Trump vows block on signing new laws until SAVE America Act passes Senate

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President Donald Trump is vowing to reject signing any new bills into law until the SAVE America Act is passed by the Senate, a tall order with just 53 Republicans seated and the 60-vote filibuster threshold a high hurdle.

“Great Job by hard working Scott Pressler on Fox & Friends talking about using the Filibuster, or Talking Filibuster, in order to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, an 88% issue with ALL VOTERS,” Trump wrote Sunday morning on Truth Social. “It must be done immediately.”

“It supersedes everything else,” Trump added. “MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE.”

The vow to halt all new law signings is a new one coming from the White House and notable because of the Senate hesitation to follow the urgings of Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to force the Senate to bring the bill forward through the talking filibuster.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with a guest during an “Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour” rally in Upper Senate Park to urge Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed,” Trump’s post continued, “AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION – GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY – ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL: NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS: NO TRANSGENDER MUTILIZATION FOR CHILDREN! DO NOT FAIL!!!”

While Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has publicly acknowledged a willingness to bring a vote on the SAVE America Act before the upper chamber, there is hesitation within the Republican Party about forcing the talking filibuster under the current Senate rules.

The talking filibuster would force Democrats to speak on the Senate floor to argue against a voter identification position widely supported by Americans, as Trump noted, but it would also force Republicans to sit in attendance with a quorum. That has been rebuked by longtime Senate GOP veterans as something that would “waste time.”

FETTERMAN EXPECTS DHS SHUTDOWN AMID PARTISAN FUNDING FEUD, BREAKS WITH DEMOCRATS ON VOTER ID

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has promised to bring the SAVE America Act to the Senate floor, but there remains some GOP hesitation on forcing the talking filibuster. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has been publicly opposed to forcing a talking filibuster because of the time constraints it would force on the Senate GOP, and he remains one of the few Senate Republicans not signing on to support the SAVE America Act.

Another development that clouds the SAVE America Act filibuster is the recent appointment of Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., to serve as the next Department of Homeland Security secretary, perhaps resigning from the Senate by the end of March.

Fox News Digital reached out to Mullin’s office for comment. McConnell’s office declined to comment on Trump’s Truth Social vow to block all new law signings amid the standoff on the DHS funding that has the government in a partial shutdown and the Senate sitting on the House-passed SAVE America Act.

GOP REACHES KEY 50-VOTE THRESHOLD FOR TRUMP-BACKED VOTER ID BILL AS SENATE FIGHT LOOMS

“We’re going to have a vote on this, but in terms of what the president is willing to sign, Maria, we need to get the Department of Homeland Security funded,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wy., told Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“The Democrats have blocked that right now. And the greatest threat to the American people today is terrorism. So I want to make sure that the Democrats work with us to pass and fund the Department of Homeland Security, because I’m worried about the lone wolf, the sleeper cells and the cyber terrorism that’s coming our way because of what Iran is telling people around the world to do to continue this reign of terror,” Barrasso said.

Getting to 60 votes in the Senate is unlikely with just Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., as the lone potential Democrat vote to side with the Senate GOP on the SAVE America Act.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS PUSH JOHNSON TO GO TO WAR WITH SENATE OVER SAVE ACT

Senate GOP WHIP John Barrasso, R-Wy., and current Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., have expressed more support for forcing Democrats to filibuster the SAVE America Act than former GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (Getty Images)

“The Democrats are against so many of the things that I think help this country,” Barrasso added to Bartiromo. “They’d rather stand with illegal immigrant criminals than with the safety and security of the American people. I want to get the Save act to the floor. I want to have a vote.”

“That’s the next step on this need to get the Department of Homeland Security open and funded,” he continued. “The Democrats are bowing to the liberal left: The people that want to eliminate ICE, the people that want open borders again, and the people that really aren’t looking out for the best interest of the American people.

“As the president said in the State of the Union, it is the first duty of the American government to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. But that’s what not one single Democrat stood up for that when every Republican stood and cheered loudly.”

Barrasso, the Senate GOP member whipping up support, considers the SAVE America Act “common sense.”

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“You want to make sure that only citizens can vote,” he concluded to Bartiromo. “You want to make sure that when people show up, they have a photo ID to prove they are who they say they are. You need a you need a photo ID to buy a beer, to board a plane, all of those things. And it’s 90% popular with the American people. The only people against this are the Democrats because they want to make it easier to cheat.”

Eric Mack is a writer for Fox News Digital covering breaking news.