California's 'leisurely' ballot counting faces backlash, Dems ripped for 'defending the indefensible'
California's "leisurely" ballot counting process is facing backlash from The New York Times editorial board, which ripped Democrats for defending the "indefensible" in a piece published Wednesday.
"This slowness is a failure of governance, and it should help inspire the creation of a better system," the editorial board wrote. "There is no good reason that California takes so long to count votes. Most democracies around the world count votes quickly. So do most other large U.S. states, including Texas, Florida, Michigan and Virginia."
California's primary occurred on June 2 and the state is still counting ballots.
"California’s leisurely approach to vote counting is a recent phenomenon. Before 2015, the state required that mail-in ballots arrive by Election Day. It now allows them to arrive seven days later so long as they are postmarked by Election Day. The state also uses a burdensome process for confirming voters’ signatures. Lawmakers say they are prioritizing accuracy and access, but states that tabulate results quickly have elections that are neither less accurate nor less accessible than California’s," the editorial noted.
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The Times called out the many excuses for slow counting, and said none were persuasive.
They called for a national law to establish Election Day as the final day to accept mail-in ballots.
The editorial board also argued that Congress should push states to count all ballots on Election Day.
"In the case of vote counting, California Democrats are defending the indefensible. The rapid counting of ballots was the norm for more than a century and remains the norm in other democratic countries. It is time for California to catch up to its own past," it wrote.
California holds what's known as a jungle primary in which all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, appear on the same ballot, with the top two finishers advancing to the general election.
After a week of counting ballots, it was confirmed late Tuesday that Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton will advance to the November California gubernatorial election in the race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
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California faced criticism over its ballot counting even before the June 2 primary.
"The fact that California elections often can't be resolved for weeks is kind of insane and not common in other electoral systems around the world," Nate Silver, a top political data analyst, wrote on X last week. "Like honestly ‘it's going to take us several weeks to tell you who won the election’ is failed state sh-t and should be much more stigmatized. The fact that it's tolerated is bad too a textbook example of learned helplessness."
Lengthy vote counts in California are a product of the state's reliance on mail voting and its thorough review process. Under California law, every registered voter receives a mail-in ballot and votes that arrive at election offices up to a week after Election Day are considered valid so long as they were postmarked by Election Day.
Gov. Newsom's office told Fox News Digital that "Governor Newsom wishes the vote count moved faster, too — which he has stated many times."
During a press conference last month regarding the state budget, Newsom was asked about California's electoral process. He told reporters: "What you're referring to is a letter I put out to all the county registrars to say get your act together, get these ballots, you know, counted. I'm very concerned that if we don't do that — particularly on the basis of the new rules and regulations that we've now implemented where we're requiring them to do so — I think it will expose us to accusations that will be exploited by the Trump administration."
Fox News' Robert Schmad contributed to this report.