Last month, Gavin Newsom issued a call to election officials across the state.\u00a0\u201cWe must continue building confidence in our elections and ensure that not only every vote is counted but every vote is trusted,\u201d he wrote, hailing\u00a0new rules and procedures that were supposed to speed up the vote counting.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe must continue building confidence in our elections and ensure that not only every vote is counted but every vote is trusted,\u201d Gov. Gavin Newsom said last month. Getty Images<\/p>\n
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Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton was right to say that \u201cthe world is laughing\u201d at California\u2019s snail-paced ballot counting, but for Californians, it\u2019s no laughing matter. REUTERS<\/p>\n
How\u2019s that working out for you?<\/a><\/p>\n The state that is home to companies whose technologies can perform the most complex tasks in nanoseconds was still counting votes a week after the polls closed.<\/p>\n To Gov. Newsom and his party, this is progress.\u00a0To the rest of the planet, it just looks like a joke.<\/p>\n Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton was right to say that \u201cthe world is laughing\u201d at California\u2019s snail-paced ballot counting<\/a>, but for Californians, it\u2019s no laughing matter.<\/p>\n By midnight in Florida on election night, almost all the votes are counted and results declared.\u00a0In California, they\u2019re barely getting started.<\/p>\n For a state already losing the reputation battle to\u00a0more dynamic, nimbler rivals, the electoral shambles is more evidence that California is failing.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just embarrassing.\u00a0It undermines faith in democracy itself.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no hard evidence of widespread fraud in this month\u2019s primary, but the way California conducts its election seems almost designed to undermine public trust in the process.<\/p>\n The manner in which Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Rahman steadily overtook Spencer Pratt\u2019s solid lead\u00a0days after the initial vote count may just about be explicable by the disproportionately high number of Democrats who mail in their ballots \u2013\u2013 and whose votes are counted late.<\/p>\n But it had a distinct throwback quality to the days when Democratic machines in American cities would hold back their vote counts until they new exactly how many their candidate \u201cneeded\u201d to pull ahead.<\/p>\n In classic California fashion, the panoply of rules supposedly designed to make ballots fairer and more trusted have the opposite effect: allowing seven days for mailed-in ballots to arrive; elaborate signature verification processes; forms of identity with laughably weak security like gym memberships, ballot harvesting and great dumps of votes garnered by partisan activists.<\/p>\n No wonder trust in the process is\u00a0slumping.<\/p>\n But worse than the process of this year\u2019s primary election, of course, is the seemingly inevitable result it produced once again.<\/p>\n In LA, Pratt\u2019s defeat and the prospect of a runoff between two Democrats is not only a depressing reminder of the rancid stagnation you get when one party has virtually unaccountable control.<\/p>\n It\u2019s another indictment of the way in which the state picks its leaders.<\/p>\n The jungle primary model was supposed to benefit moderate candidates in both parties by encouraging them to seek voters across the political spectrum. Instead, it\u00a0more often deprives voters of real choice.<\/p>\n Instead of separate party primaries which produce two candidates who then offer genuinely competing platforms in the general election\u00a0\u2013\u2013 when more people vote \u2013\u2013 we have a system that frequently eliminates true choice.<\/p>\n Karen Bass and Raman now face no restraining alternative from the other side of the political spectrum.<\/p>\n For a city that has been ravaged by homelessness, crime, failed public responses to emergencies and chronically poor educational opportunities, this is a travesty: The answer to four-plus years of mismanagement is an invitation to choose between the candidate who\u2019s been responsible for it with ruinous Democratic policies, or the candidate offering to outflank her with Democratic policies guaranteed to be more ruinous.<\/p>\n At the state level, at least the jungle primary produced a general election contest with a real choice.\u00a0Thanks to Republican voters consolidating behind Hilton, he gets to go head to head against quintessential establishment Democrat Xavier Becerra.<\/p>\n At least Hilton has an opportunity to lay out the promise of a turn away from the endless, vicious vortex of tax and spend policies that have harmed the state\u2019s economy and driven wealthy creators away\u00a0while doing nothing to improve public services.\u00a0 <\/p>\n If you want a look at what more Democratic rule would mean, just take a glance at Measure ER in LA County, which as of this writing is ahead. It\u2019s yet another tax increase \u2013\u2013 this one a sales tax surcharge\u00a0supposedly to fund health care but which seems certain to cause only more pain to hard-pressed consumers.<\/p>\n That\u2019s quite a trifecta, Democrats.\u00a0While you\u2019re celebrating, California is\u00a00-for-3.<\/p>\n Gerard Baker is editor at large of The Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters <\/p>\n California Post News: Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, TikTok<\/a>, X<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>, WhatsApp<\/a>, LinkedIn<\/a>
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