Voter’s Choice Act Report for the 2020 Primary and General Elections

This report, commissioned by the California Secretary of State’s office and conducted by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, provides a comprehensive overview of language access and voter participation for language minorities in the fifteen counties that implemented the Voter’s Choice Act (VCA) during the 2020 Primary and General Elections. Appendix B1 focuses on the 2020 Primary Election, while Appendix B2 focuses on the 2020 General Election. Appendix C describes the usage of the methodology, Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding (BISG), in conducting its research. Major findings of this report are that turnout rates significantly increased across California counties as a result of more accessible voting by mail and that both non-VCA and VCA counties (excluding Los Angeles) had comparable vote-by-mail usage rates.

Contributors: Matthew Barreto, Michael Rios, Vivian Alejandre & Sonni Waknin