California’s primary elections were on Tuesday, yet we will not truly know the results for several weeks, because California’s incompetence in every area of governance extends to elections.As of 9 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, 13 hours after polls closed Tuesday night, California has counted about 58% of the total votes cast. For comparison, in that same time frame, Iowa, Montana, and South Dakota have counted more than 95% of the votes cast, and New Jersey has counted more than 90%. You can quibble that those states had a head start of a few hours over California, but it’s irrelevant; California won’t have counted more than 95% of the votes by the end of this week.
You could argue that California has such a large population that the slower vote count makes sense, but it is still so disproportionately, absurdly slow compared to other large states. Florida, with a population of nearly 24 million and spanning two time zones, is able to count nearly all of its votes within a few hours of polls closing. In 2024, it took California a week to count 76% of its votes, with 43 congressional and state legislature races counting less than 70% of the tally. In 2018, it took nearly a month after the election for the Democratic candidate to declare victory in the state’s competitive 21st Congressional District, and in 2020, it took until December for him to concede after a loss.
