M.D. Kittle of the Federalist urges US Supreme Court action in the wake of California’s latest election.
As of the close of the business day Wednesday, California election officials had counted a little over half of the votes cast in Tuesday’s primary election for governor. It could take days, if not weeks, until the election results are final.
A full day after the polls closed, the election was “too early to call,” according to NBC News. Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host endorsed by President Donald Trump, led Xavier Becerra, the Biden administration’s bumbling Health and Human Services secretary, by 2 percentage points — 27.6 percent to 25.6 percent. Billionaire climate change cult leader Tom Steyer was in third with 19.8 percent of the vote.
The top two vote-getters move on to November’s general election.
When will we know the final tally? Who knows? As The Federalist’s Hayden Daniel quipped, “Colombia, a mountainous country infested with drug lords and guerrillas, is counting its votes more efficiently than the state of California.”
California is Exhibit A in the argument to Make Election Day Election Day Again.
Thanks to the Golden State’s muddled universal mail-in voting and generous grace period — seven days — for ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted, the electoral waiting game has become a frustrating way of life. Not just for California voters, but for the entire representative democracy. In 2024, California’s extended Election Day forced the country to wait more than a month to learn the majority-minority power balance in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The slow count didn’t instill a lot of faith in California election integrity then, and confidence levels certainly won’t improve with the latest debacle.
A looming U.S. Supreme Court ruling could end the seemingly endless Election Day of California and other blue and red states.
Watson v. Republican National Committee will decide whether federal election statutes preempt the California quagmire — laws allowing ballots to be counted long after Election Day.
