The primary election in Maine is today, and that quiet state finds itself at the center of the national conversation because of the high likelihood that Graham Platner — veteran, oysterman, mercenary, ne’er-do-well, and Nazi tattoo-haver — will be the Democratic nominee in the Senate race there.
There is plenty to read on Platner, including here at Broad + Liberty, and there is no need to belabor the points that others have already made. There is another issue that bears addressing, though: as the Maine race gets called tonight, we will still not know the results of California’s primary, even though the polls there closed a week ago. This is a longstanding issue in the nation’s biggest state, and it is starting to cause problems in people’s faith in the democratic process.
In the post-war period, California looked like a vision of America’s future. The Golden State was attracting population and generating wealth. Its roads and schools were shiny and new, its politics reflected suburban civics, not the big-city machines of the East. Its elections were conducted efficiently and honestly. But since that time, all of the luster has dulled, and California has become a one-party state where, bizarrely, it is difficult to to get anything done. Gridlock in the federal government can be chalked up to two parties that are constantly butting heads, but California’s Democrats vanquished the local Republicans years ago. Still, the machinery of state is grinding to a halt, seemingly on purpose.
Since switching to a nearly all-mail-in system, and allowing ballots mailed by election day to be counted as much as a week after the election, California has decided that reporting results on election night is not important. And, in one way, they are not wrong. Our system allows for two months between election and inauguration — much longer than many other countries. It is not strictly necessary that results be delivered that night.
But it raises people’s eyebrows for a number of reasons. For one: Californians used to get results by election night, like every other state. A state government choosing to be less efficient is counter-intuitive, and leads observers to wonder (as in the case of California’s high-speed rail project) whether the newfound delays are because of incompetence or corruption. Another reason for suspicion is that no other state takes anywhere near this long. And, finally, people tend to become suspicious if one party always seems to gain more votes than the other in the last days of counting — especially when, as in the case of the California Democratic Party, it also just happens to be the party that controls all branches of the state government.
That sounds paranoid, and we should always be wary of casting doubt on elections without proof. Faith in the electoral process is essential for a republic to function. That means two things: that the people should not doubt them without evidence, and also that the state should do everything it can to make the process secure, efficient, and transparent. Neither of these things is happening now, and one feeds into the other.
Every time that a Republican leads in the vote and then gets surpassed in the final days by a Democrat — long after every other state would have decided it — it adds to the feeling that something isn’t right. And while California Democrats defend their process as “counting every vote,” we all know that were the situation reversed, they would not be so trusting. If Louisiana — which until recently shared the same top-two jungle primary system that California uses — were to take a couple weeks to count votes, and if the Democrats in those races always found themselves losing vote share as the count went on, Democrats across the country would be in the streets demanding federal investigations.
Maybe those who are suspicious are wrong. Maybe Democrats in California wait until the last minute to vote and Republicans are more punctual. And maybe that would have been enough, once. In California’s golden age, as the nation basked in post-war unity and built a high-trust society, if that one state had been idiosyncratic tardy in reporting returns, people might have accepted it.
But that is not the society of 2026. Societal trust is falling and has been for years — especially trust in government and the media. There is not a quick fix to that problem, but one way to start is by being scrupulously honest and efficient about the processes of government. When trust is low, you no longer get the benefit of the doubt. That’s not fair, maybe, but that’s the way it is.
Some states are better at this than others, and change is possible. Florida’s electoral system was the laughingstock of the nation in 2000. Now, it’s one of the best around. Results are known within hours — accurately. Pennsylvania is not the speediest, and our mail-in ballots law seems to be constantly under court challenge, but we mostly get the job done and have made some slight improvements.
California, on the other hand, seems to keep getting worse. That’s not just a problem for election junkies who want the results immediately; it’s a problem for trust in the democratic system.
Kyle Sammin is the managing editor of Broad + Liberty.