[The New York Times] California’s elections chief says voting is unfolding smoothly, despite a charged environment

By Nick Corasaniti

With false allegations of voter fraud trailing the California recall election, we checked in with Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who oversees the state’s elections, about how voting has progressed and how her office is dealing with efforts to undermine faith in the contest. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

How is voting going?

We’ve seen over eight million ballots mailed back thus far, which is a very significant number of ballots coming in. So that in itself is rather exciting, as well as ballots still being dropped off at the ballot boxes this morning.

We’ve had folks calling all of our hotlines asking where their polling places are or looking for additional information. It’s clear that people are interested in voting today.