Everybody counts if they'll hold that oath. This page fills in as we find the real, sourced answer — never with a guess. A blank means we haven't found it yet, not that it doesn't matter.
The idea behind this page, in the words that started it:
"Everybody counts in this site if they will hold that Oath of Office — what if somebody did not know they could vote for them because I want it to show we the people what we can do when we can see?"
So this page doesn't tell you who to vote for. It shows you who's actually running, what they've actually said and filed, and the same numbers for everyone in the race — side by side, sourced, no label on top of it. You draw the conclusion. We just make sure you can see it.
Real, fixed dates from California's own election authority — not a reminder we made up, a countdown against the actual deadline. Counting down in your own device's clock, local time.
Source: California Secretary of State, Key Dates & Deadlines, Nov 3, 2026 General Election. Same-day registration is real but comes with a provisional, not regular, ballot — register by Oct 19 if you can. Two different "early voting" dates are both true and they get confused constantly: the Secretary of State lists early voting opening Oct 5 at county elections offices, but under the Voter’s Choice Act the neighborhood vote centers most Californians actually use open Oct 24. Corrected 2026-09-06 — this page first showed only the Oct 5 date, which could have sent a voter to a site that wasn’t open yet.
Five official, government-run links. Not us, not a party, not a PAC — the actual agencies that run elections.
Six boxes. Check them as you actually do them — not as a promise, a record. Nothing here is saved on our end; the whole checklist lives in the link itself, so it only goes where you send it.
Check a few boxes, then copy the link — the checked state travels with the URL itself, so pasting it to someone else, or bookmarking it, brings the same boxes back checked. The download is a plain text file, nothing sent anywhere.
Sixty-one candidates filed. Two are on your November ballot. That's not us narrowing the field — that's what California's own election law does, and it's worth understanding before you look at the two names below.
California doesn't run a party primary like Nebraska's governor race. Every candidate, of every party, appears on one primary ballot together. The top two vote-getters advance to November — regardless of party. In 2026 that produced one Democrat and one Republican, but the rule doesn't guarantee that; it's produced two candidates from the same party in other California races before. If you're used to "the Democratic primary" and "the Republican primary" as separate contests, this is a genuinely different system, not a smaller version of the same one.
The top two of 61 primary candidates, certified by the Secretary of State. Every field below is sourced. A blank stays a blank until we find the real number.
| Candidate | Party | Current / former office | June 2, 2026 primary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xavier Becerra | Democratic | U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (2021–2025); California Attorney General (2017–2021) | 1st place, 27.98% (2,591,857 votes) |
| Steve Hilton | Republican | Political commentator; former adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron (2010–2012) | 2nd place, 24.59% (2,277,318 votes) |
| Third place was closer than the two-way framing suggests: Tom Steyer took 22.79% (2,110,707 votes) — a margin of 1.8 points off second place. Not on your ballot, but worth knowing the race wasn't a runaway to two. | |||
| Campaign money for this race — not yet pulled. Statewide California races file with the state's own Cal-Access system, not the FEC. Logged, not built yet. | |||
Sources: California Secretary of State, Statement of Vote, June 2026 Primary (official, certified) · CA SOS, certified candidate list — Governor · 2026 California gubernatorial election, Wikipedia (for candidate biography cross-references only — every vote figure above is the certified SOS number, not Wikipedia's)
A real thread, not a coincidence: Gavin Newsom couldn't run again — California's constitution limits governors to two terms, and his second ends in 2027. An open seat is exactly the situation where the most candidates show up, which is part of why 61 people filed for one job. The mechanism explains the number; the number isn't just California being unusually chaotic.
Still blank, on purpose: every dollar figure for this race, and any running-mate-equivalent detail (California doesn't pair governor and lieutenant governor candidates on one ticket the way Nebraska does — they run as separate, independently elected offices, which is itself worth knowing if you're comparing the two states side by side). Not built yet. Check back, or if you find it first with a source, that's homework too.
In the meantime: this site does already track real, sourced money for California's federal delegation — a different set of people and a different filer (FEC, not Cal-Access) than the Governor's race above, so the two aren't mixed together here. See who's #PAC_FUNDED and who's #HIGH_PAC_SHARE → Or meet the whole federal delegation directly on the map →
Beta. Ten states built so far. Every number here is dated and linked to where it came from. A blank means we haven't found the real answer yet — we don't fill it with a guess to make the page look finished.
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