Super Tuesday is over. Donald Trump officially became the presumptive nominee, and Joe Biden became the first incumbent to lose a primary contest. Yet, as of Thursday morning, in the once-great state of California, the Democratic primary election isn’t over yet.
The results are known, of course. Joe Biden easily won the state and its 424 delegates, but the counting isn’t done yet, and liberal reporter Michael Tracy wonders why.
By Wednesday afternoon, only 45% of the vote was counted.
California currently has less than half of the primary vote counted, but remember, you're an "election denier" if you find this disconcerting pic.twitter.com/QVLPHFtiIT
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) March 6, 2024
As of Thursday morning, that number has now skyrocketed to 50%.
Mr. Tracey is correct in saying that this is disconcerting. Why is it taking so long to count the votes? We’ve all seen elections where not only was the outcome determined in a single evening, but all (or at least most) of the votes were successfully counted as well. Other countries pull this off, too.
It’s actually not a secret why, and you may already have figured it out. The answer, of course, is mail-in voting.
"By Tuesday night in California, the ballots will be cast, but the results for many races may remain uncertain for days, even weeks,” the New York Times warned Tuesday. "It is a familiar waiting game that is unique to the state, tending to prompt public scrutiny and debate when major races or hot-button issues are at stake."
Related: The Theory That Mail-in Voting Is Secure Just Died a Horrible Death
The report continued, "But the delay is largely connected to the fact that most of the state’s 22 million registered voters cast mail ballots — and to an extensive review process that requires more than placing a ballot through a machine."
In California, that means verifying each mail-in ballot through a series of steps, including checking signatures and making sure voters did not cast another ballot elsewhere.
If a signature does not match what is on file, as has been the case with those who mistakenly sign using characters of a foreign language, county officials are required to contact the voter to give that person the opportunity to correct it.
The state also counts ballots that arrive late, as long as they are postmarked with the correct date and arrive within seven days. And while many other states must count ballots within a week, California law allows 30 days.
“It looks like it takes forever because it does,” said Paul Mitchell with Political Data Inc., a data firm based in California.
The New York Times isn’t the only outlet that wrote a story conditioning the public for a long, drawn-out vote-counting process. The Los Angeles Times said outright to “forget election night answers,” but assured us that "these comparatively slow vote counts are a feature of a working democratic system, not a bug."
Oh, I don’t doubt it’s a feature. We’ve seen this before. And the ironic thing is that the incredibly long vote-counting process is supposed to assure us that everything is being done securely and fairly when studies have shown that mail-in voting is the antithesis of secure.
Despite the media's efforts to prepare the public for a ridiculously long period of counting votes, Tracey proved that deep down, we all know there’s something “disconcerting" about it taking days or weeks.
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