(Daily Signal)—Americans should expect, at a minimum, to have elections that are free and fair, and results that are delivered promptly. But California is taking its laid-back reputation too far, failing to deliver its election results in a timely manner and creating the perception that they are neither free nor fair.
Slothful election results have plagued California for years since it made wholesale changes to its election system in 2016. It has mass mail-in ballots that can be counted post-election and allows for an extremely slow pace of counting.
Proponents of the system say this makes their elections more “secure” and accessible.
You won’t be surprised to learn that Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, insists that this is the best voting system of all time and that all criticism is FAKE NEWS.
But that’s certainly not how it looks.
As of now, the Los Angeles mayoral runoff would seem to be down to incumbent Democrat Karen Bass and the surging upstart Republican Spencer Pratt, with leftist candidate Nithya Raman taking the third spot. That would cut Raman out of the general election.
Raman cried on election night and certainly seemed convinced that she’d lost.
But since election day, new batches of mail-in votes have continued to trickle in for Raman. Even more curiously, electoral prediction markets have swung strongly in her favor.
Why would it be a surprise that many are calling foul?
It’s been days since the primary election took place. Bass and Pratt seemed like the clear winners. If Raman somehow catches Pratt, it would be a massive victory for Democrats to not only cut off a popular, rising GOP star but to ensure that the only choice in November will be one far-left Democrat and another, farther-left Democrat.
Election prediction markets should be taken with a grain of salt, but the fact that we are so far from election day and we are still so far from resolution is, frankly, shameful.
The problem isn’t just the mayor’s race. Votes continue to be counted for the other major elections in the state, too, and likely won’t be settled for weeks.
Just look at this nonsense.
It’s deeply symbolic that the Golden State—allegedly at the cutting edge of technology—can’t get its act together to fulfill the most basic functions of “democracy.”
California is right to be ripped for delivering election results as if we are living in the days before the invention of the telegraph.
The state is run by the party of big government, but that government can’t be bothered to run anything effectively, efficiently, or at a standard above what would be considered dysfunctional even in a third-world country.
This has created the impression that not only is the system broken, but that the powers that be in this one-party state are in the business of finding the votes they need to win every race, regardless of what happens on election day.
This perception has triggered a deluge of commentary on social media.
“Count until you get the result you want?” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, asked on X.
Florida has a remarkably smooth and effective vote-counting system. See, even the most broken election system can be fixed.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, wrote that California’s process is undermining trust in elections.
The more delays, mass mail-in voting, and ballot harvesting that we tolerate in our elections, the less trust Americans will have in those elections. https://t.co/UB1BeKmELl
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) June 4, 2026
And President Donald Trump blasted the California slow roll vote-counting in a post on Truth Social. He said that there would be a federal investigation.
“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” Trump wrote. “Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting DELAY???”
He later posted that California is basically an advertisement for passing the Save America Act, which would require proof of citizenship in voting and ban mass mail-in ballots.
Even some on the left are starting to acknowledge that California’s elections are intolerable.
Liberal journalist Nate Silver said that it’s “kind of insane” that it takes California weeks to resolve an election.
“Like honestly ‘it’s going to take us several weeks to tell you who won the election’ is failed state s— and should be much more stigmatized,” he wrote on Tuesday. “The fact that it’s tolerated is bad too, a textbook example of learned helplessness.”
A piece in the reliably left-leaning Los Angeles Times even ran with a headline, “Can we speed up California’s vote count already?” and had interviews with local election officials who said that the slow counting “undermines voter confidence.”
Yet, it seems that California state leaders have no interest in changing anything. You’ll accept this cumbersome, broken, infuriating process whether you like it or not.
Thank goodness for the Electoral College, which at least limits the damage states like California can inflict on the rest of the country.
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