Let me cut to the chase: the main problem that California takes longer than other states to count all the votes and declare winners isn’t that California takes longer than other states. The problem is that Donald Trump and his allies, like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, lie about what it all means.
There is a secondary problem of general impatience from news junkies who want to know election results before they go to bed on election night.
There is, however, nothing inherently wrong, corrupt, anti-democratic, or really worthy of serious criticism for the way that California conducts its elections.
I will confess, had I designed the system, I likely would have required ballots to have been mailed earlier and arrive by election day, and I would prefer a process that was faster. But, I would note, none of that has anything to do with accuracy or democracy/legal legitimacy.
Put another way: I am not claiming that CA’s system is perfect, and I am willing to listen to reform suggestions. But I am also directly stating that there are no legitimate claims of fraud or inaccuracy. There is no evidence that any of this is anything other than what it appears, i.e., they take a while to count.
The core problem, therefore, with California is that Trump and others lie about what it all means.
That’s it. That’s the problem.
See, for example, this story from Axios: California’s “red mirage” feeds MAGA fraud frenzy which includes this:
There was a similar story on NPR this morning, and Tim Miller and JVL were complaining about it on the Bulwark podcast the other day. There are several such stories on Memeorandum as I type this.
Each of these stories has two things in common. First, they talk about how Trump and his allies lie about what CA’s slowness means. Second, none of them has any evidence that CA’s slowness is an actual problem, except that the slowness gives Trump and company an opening for lying.
Stop me if it isn’t obvious that the problem is Trump’s lying, not CA’s slowness. Further, I would note that Trump does not need CA’s slowness to, you know, lie about election results.
In terms of allies, here’s Mike Johnson:
It is amazing to think of all the things that Johnson has said he was unaware of when Trump was doing the indefensible, but all of a sudden, he “instinctively” knows something is rotten in California. This is, I would note, the Speaker of the House deliberately casting doubt on American democracy for petty partisan gain.
Here’s Ron DeSantis:
I refuse to believe that these guys don’t understand how all of this really works. Any given ballot box is not going to be normally distributed. If a box comes from a heavily Democratic precinct, there are going to be more Democratic than Republican votes in the box. Los Angeles is a heavily Democratic city. Math, the harshest of mistresses, dictates that in a Top Two primary, two Democrats is not a fantastical outcome (and BTW, the ballot is actually nonpartisan).
Also, This Just In! Bass is the incumbent mayor, and Nithya Raman is a member of the City Council. The ostensible Republican, Spencer Pratt, is described thusly at Ballotpedia:
Pratt received a B.A. in political science from the University of Southern California. He starred in the reality television shows The Hills, I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, Big Brother, and Marriage Boot Camp. Pratt was also a media entrepreneur and hummingbird hobbyist.
Color me shocked that two elected officials beat out the “media entrepreneur and hummingbird hobbyist.”
Here is how Pratt’s website (and he does use a hummingbird* as part of his logo) describes him:
Spencer first rose to international prominence as the architect of modern reality television, serving as a central figure on MTV’s iconic series The Hills.
Well, then.
Here’s a downloadable poster from said site:
Here are the final results:
BTW, LA County went roughly 65% for Harris and 32% for Trump in 2024. As such, the above numbers seem in line with past elections. I realize, BTW, that LA County is more than just the city of LA, but the county numbers give a rough proxy (and I would guess that the city is probably somewhat more Democratic than the county as a whole (but that is just a guess).
I realized that I wrote a version of this post back in 2022: “We Used to Know on Election Night!”
For the record, by the way, hummingbirds are cool.
UPDATE: I read Jonathan Bernstein’s latest, Undermining Democracy, after I wrote this.
From the piece:
The main thing I’d add to that is that people are tempted to blame California’s slow count for inviting claims of fraud, but that’s bunk. Trump claimed fraud in the very first election he contested, the 2016 Iowa caucuses, and pretty much every election since. Including elections he won. Count fast, count slow; vote by mail or in person; use machines or people to count, and Trump is going to claim fraud, often with the bulk of his party right there with him. Changing how the votes are counted will do absolutely nothing to change that.
Exactly.
Also,
Look: Donald Trump took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Undermining confidence in elections based on nothing at all is a form of undermining the Constitution. It’s that simple. Am I suggesting that these false claims could be part of a legitimate impeachment and removal? I am. And he’s not the only one. Speaker Johnson took an oath to defend the Constitution as well, and so did every yahoo Member of the House and Senator jumping on the phony fraud bandwagon.
Indeed.
See, also, Rick Hasen writing at MS Now: Trump’s latest ‘voter fraud’ claims may backfire on him in the fall.
I am less sanguine about the boy-who-cried-wolf of it all, but the piece is worth a read in any event.
And to add to those undermining democracy, here’s Representative Steve Scalise:
