Voting this Weekend? 5 Things California Voters NEED to Know

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Welcome back to the California Conversation. I'm Tess Abraham. This Tuesday is the primary election, which means that this weekend is your last real chance to make a plan to go out and vote. Now, if you're feeling overwhelmed by the names on your ballot, or if you're unsure of some of the races, or if you're questioning if your vote actually matters in our state at all, you are not alone. And so, in this very bonus special fun election episode of the show, I want to cover the five things that you need to know before you vote, so that you can walk into this election confident, ready, and informed.

[00:00:32]The first thing that you need to know going into this election is that, yes, you absolutely do need to vote. Now, I know that California feels sometimes like it's beyond saving, and Democrats have had a supermajority in our state for years, and so it feels like, can we actually make change? I also know there are a lot of questions going around about election integrity, saying, "Well, California elections are just rigged, so why would I even bother? I'm not going to show up." And I just want you to hear me clearly. It is our greatest responsibility as citizens of America to show up at the polls and to make our voices heard. Even if you believe that there are election integrity concerns, and I believe some of those things are true, but even if you all that believe it's fully rigged, there is a literally no downside to voting. It takes you maybe a few minutes, maybe an hour at most if you're going in person to the polls and voting, or you just drop it off in the mailbox. It does not take much effort on your part, and the worst that it can do is actually help your cause. The worst that it can do is support your candidate, and we want that. If you don't vote, then you are guaranteeing that your voice is not going to be heard, which means if you are a conservative, you are guaranteeing one less vote for that conservative candidate. And so, you need to vote.

[00:01:48]This race, especially for governor, is a lot tighter than we want to be comfortable with. Now, Steve Hilton has looked like the polling has been on his side, it looks like he's been leading in the race, but the polls are all over the place and I even read one just this morning that said that Becerra was in the lead and that Hilton was more in the second. And so, we just need every single vote that we can get for conservatives.

[00:02:12]I also don't think that we can complain about California and that we can say that there's issues and that we can say that our leadership is bought and corrupt and then not show up. We can't do that. We have to be people who see the responsibility that is in front of us and who do our best. It doesn't always mean that the outcome is guaranteed to go your way. It doesn't mean that we will get a conservative even on the November ballot, but it does mean that we did everything possible in our power to make sure it wasn't our fault, to make sure it wasn't because we didn't show up that someone didn't end up being able to make it further in the race than they did. So, please don't let any cynicism, don't let any discouragement, or don't let any questioning about how this election could really go, don't let that be an excuse for your total disengagement from the process. If you have not voted already, make a plan today, right now, a plan of how you're going to vote. Are you going to mail in your ballot? Are you going to vote early before Tuesday or are you going to go vote on election day? Are you going to vote in person?

[00:03:18]Where is your center that you're going to go to to cast your ballot? Do you know if your registration status is active and you are registered to vote in California? Make a plan now so that nothing gets in the way between now and election day. If it's too vague, you might forget about it or you might go to vote on Tuesday and not know where you're supposed to go or you might realize that you weren't registered. So, right now, take the time, make a real plan. California's only going to change if we are willing to continue to show up. So, you need to vote. The second thing you need to know is that there are several down ballot races that significantly matter for how California is governed. I know that the governor's race gets a lot of attention, and that's pretty much all that we have covered on the show. I have talked about the LA mayoral race, but beyond that, I continue to talk about candidates. And that's because I can't cover everything, and there are so many races, so I have to choose since I only I'm on here once per week of what we are going to talk about. But, there are so many other offices that really create the building blocks of what the government is in California. Government is not about the big offices. Yes, those are important.

[00:04:27]The president, the governor, those are very important roles, and we want to elect the right people to those roles.

[00:04:34]But, there are so many other stops underneath that, and those small offices are what ultimately make up what our state is going to be. And so, if you live in LA, we talked about the mayoral race, and that is very important. So, if you live in LA city's jurisdiction, which is fairly wide and spread out, then you need to be showing up to vote for Spencer Pratt if you want change from Karen Bass. There are also statewide offices that are going to shape a lot of systems. The insurance commissioner, I'm sure you don't think about that one every day, but think about all of the fires. Think about the insurance crisis that we're in here in California. The insurance companies that have been fleeing our state, the lack of competition, which drives up prices, and people are getting dropped from their policies. That impacts your life, and so that is a very important office. And there is a one candidate who is more conservative and who wants to bring back competition, and who wants to significantly change the system, and there are a whole host of candidates who are Democrats and want to keep things largely the same. And so, if we can rally our support for that conservative candidate, and the race is split up among Democrats, as we similarly are seeing with the governor, there is a shot that we could get a more conservative candidate into that office of insurance commissioner. So, it would be an absolute mistake to overlook these offices. You are not only voting for the governor, you are also voting for every person who makes up our government as a whole and who specifically influences certain processes and systems that make your life what it is. And so, they are the ones who are going to determine how insurance companies are going to be regulated, like we talked about with that commissioner, how state money is managed and invested, how laws are going to be enforced, that's the attorney general, or sometimes, you know, not enforced at all. And then what priorities our state government is actually going to focus on. So, there are a lot of names on your ballot, there are a lot of offices that we need to be voting for and I want you to take it seriously. Don't just vote for one or two offices, take time now that you still have time. You still have time before Tuesday. Take time to investigate these offices and choose the best candidates because if we don't vote for them, if we don't cast our ballots on these secondary positions, then it really doesn't matter if we get our guy into the governor seat, he is going to be fighting an uphill battle. Real change in California isn't going to only happen at the top, it's going to happen all throughout our state. So, please don't ignore these races. The third thing you need to know is that yes, even our state primary has effects on our federal government. And that's because, again, it's not just about the governorship, but there's also races for United States House of Representatives.

[00:07:11]And as we saw last year with Proposition 50, if you followed me in that saga, we have gerrymandered is what it was here in California, but completely redistricted California. And so, because of that, several conservatives who held seats in the House of Representatives either have been booted out of their districts entirely, and so districts are going to flip to Democrats, or the Republicans have much tighter races against Democrats in their districts, which now have more Democrat voters. So, what you need to do is you need to look into your specific district. You need to look at who is running and you need to look up how tight the races are because every single vote matters. A lot of these representatives don't win their seats by large swings in the majority.

[00:07:56]They actually win because of a few hundred more votes and that's because it's a much smaller race. It's just for your specific district. It's not statewide. And so your vote matters even more. It has even more power where you live. So, even if you think that you're not going to impact the governorship, show up for your district in terms of who is going to represent you in the federal government. That is incredibly important. And that leads into the fourth thing that you need to know, which is these races can be overwhelming. It can feel like a lot to think, "Man, there's so many names I have to know and how in the world am I supposed to look all of these up and maybe at this point I only have the weekend and I'm busy this weekend." So, point number four, there are good resources to help you. You don't have to do it alone. You don't have to find someone who's going to tell you exactly who to vote for in every situation. You just need good resources to help you think critically through who you want to cast your ballot for. And so I want to give a quick plug for one that I think is really helpful and that is called I Voter Guide. I will link it below. It is a Christian and conservative leaning resource and what they do is they don't recommend candidates, but they do rate all of the candidates. So, you can look at every race, every district in our state, every federal office that is up for election right now and on our ballots. You can look at them and they will have different ratings of whether the person is liberal, whether they lean liberal, whether they lean conservative, whether they are conservative, whether they're far left or far right. They have these ratings and they also have oversight into their ratings. And so because of that, you can be confident that when you're looking at someone's name, you may have never heard of them, but you can see their voting history, you can see the issues that they have found to be important, you can see their donations, and then you can see their overall rating. That has been so helpful to me, and I hope that it will be so helpful to you. So, use these tools, use the tools that are available to you. And if you have ones that you think are super helpful, drop them below, comment them below for everyone to see. Cover all of the races, cross-reference between different resources, but don't let discouragement or don't let overwhelm keep you from even voting at all or to leave things blank. Because there are so many resources at your disposal that can prevent that from happening. And last and most importantly, point number five for you, just be faithful with this vote. As I mentioned at the top of the show, voting is one of the most basic, and I would argue one of the most important responsibilities that we have as Americans. It is so incredible and so unfathomable that we have a direct say in how we get to be governed. I know that it's hard here. I know that. I'm frustrated by it, too. But, do not let your discouragement or your disillusionment, do not let that keep you from engaging in the process. We can't only engage when we think that we're going to win. We have to engage even when it's hard, even when we are the minority. Because that really is what it means to be American. That's what it means to hold out hope for our state that we can still try to enact change. And till the day I die, to my final breath, I will say it is never too far gone. We are never past the point of people being able to change their hearts and minds in order to actually make tangible steps in our state to fixing the problems that we have. We have seen shifts in California. We have seen people coming around. We have seen people going through things like the fires in the Palisades or seeing homelessness directly on their street and asking why it is that way and being more open-minded to change. So, if we throw up our hands, if we say that we're not going to engage because it's too fraught, it's too difficult, and we just don't think that we can actually make a difference, that guarantees that we will not make a difference. But, if we show up, if we're faithful, if we say, "This vote might not change anything, but it changes me." It changes me because I'm going to be faithful with the responsibilities and the rights and the privileges that I am granted in my country that other people are not granted. If we say that, then I still have absolute hope and faith in our state that it can become great again.

[00:12:09]Your participation is not optional in our political system. Even if you don't show up to vote, you are still participating, but you are participating in a negative way to your own values and to the people who you might want to champion and agree with. So, your participation is required. It's required for your state, it's required for your district, it's required for your community. So, the primary is this Tuesday. It is so exciting. We have a real chance to push forward further change in our government here in California, which I think we can all agree we absolutely want to see happen.

[00:12:44]I hope you have an absolutely wonderful weekend. Please make a plan to vote, get out and vote, vote on election day. It is so exciting. Get that sticker, and I cannot wait to go over all the results with you next week. Remember, we do not get change by waiting for it. We get change by participating to make it happen. So, let's show up to make change in our state for the better.

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