California Is Not Doing Itself (and Democracy) Any Favors With Slow Vote Count

There is an explanation for why California is taking soooo long to count its votes: Election officials in the Golden State want to make it as easy as possible for people to vote while also ensuring that the legitimacy of millions of mail-in ballots can be ensured.

Specifically, this means that even ballots arriving a week after Election Day will be counted as long as the postmark shows that they were sent on time — in this case, on or before June 2.

In addition, officials verify the signatures on every ballot. If there is a discrepancy with the signature on file, the respective voter is notified and given an opportunity to confirm that the ballot is theirs, which is a great way to prevent fraud.

That being said, since all 23 million Californians who are registered to vote automatically receive a mail-in ballot, all of this takes a long time.

Which is why, as of Sunday morning, nearly 30 percent of votes cast in the gubernatorial primary had yet to be counted and new batches of them keep trickling in. And, since people who vote in person have different preferences than those who mail in their ballots early or those who do so barely on time, the results keep changing.

In the high-profile Los Angeles mayoral primary, for example, Republican candidate and Fox News darling Spencer Pratt was comfortably ahead in the race for the all-important second place on Tuesday night. This would allow him to advance to a runoff with incumbent Karen Bass (D).

Since then, however, the race has tightened, and it now seems likely that progressive city councilwoman Nithya Raman (D) will overtake Pratt when all the votes are counted.

Now, in a world in which everybody supported democracy and acted in good faith, this glacial pace of delivering an election result would be a mere nuisance. After all, it’s about accuracy, not speed (although California is pushing the limits of reasonable delay).

However, that’s not the world we live in.

Instead, Republicans from Donald Trump on down are looking for any opportunity to attack and undermine democracy.

To them, a process that is designed to achieve the result that they claim to want, i.e., that all votes are counted accurately and that the possibility of fraud is minimized, is an invitation to assert that something sinister is going on.

The president has posted about California’s election half a dozen time since Tuesday and accused the Democrats of “cheating.”

“They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES,” he wrote on his social media site. “Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.”

In another post, Trump stated that California is “under investigation” by the US attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

Other MAGA luminaries joined in.

“The reason ID is banned in California (and New York) elections is to enable large-scale fraud,” said Elon Musk on his social media site. “When you combine no ID and mail-in voting, fraud is de facto legalized.”

There are a few reasons why this conspiracy theory doesn’t make sense.

First of all, it’s important to remember that this is about a primary. Both in the gubernatorial race and that for mayor, the Democratic candidate will be heavily favored to win in November. Bass, for example, would much rather face Pratt than a progressive challenger.

In addition, if election officials were able to cheat, then they probably wouldn’t do it in a way that invites conspiracy theorists such as Trump and Musk to get involved.

Finally, they wouldn’t pick the Los Angeles mayoral contest to do it.

After all, the race for governor is much more important, and the outcome much less certain.

Here, former Secretary of Health Human Services Xavier Beccera (D) has advanced to the runoff. While he would ordinarily be heavily favored to beat Steve Hilton (R), a former Fox News personality, Becerra has some baggage.

Specifically, a federal corruption case has ensnared one of his former aides, and you have to believe that a super-politicized Department of Justice will try to create as many headaches for him as possible if he runs against a Republican.

Therefore, if they were in a position to steal an election, Democrats would ensure that two of their own were competing in the runoff.

Of course, those kinds of things don’t matter to the likes of Trump, who only wants to further undermine confidence in elections to be able to claim that he and the GOP were cheated the next time he loses.

And, unfortunately, with the way it conducts its elections, California has given him an opening to do so, which is why Golden State officials should really try to figure out how to speed up the process while continuing to ensure the integrity of the vote.