California Scheming? Golden State’s Glacial Vote Count Bolsters Case for SAVE America Act
7th June 2026
The polls closed in California on Tuesday at 8 p.m. local time. As of Saturday, nobody knows which two candidates will be competing in November for governor or Los Angeles mayor.
Indeed, mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day may stumble in for seven days until June 9—and still be counted. Thus, weeks could pass before these major political contests are settled. Counties have until July 3 to report their official results to the secretary of state.
It was not always this way. By 5 a.m. on March 6, 2013, 100% of precincts had totaled the previous day’s ballots. Nine hours after voting ended, Angelenos knew the final two mayoral rivals. (Gil Garcetti prevailed.) As of Friday, only 71% of ballots had been tabulated in Los Angeles and just 68% statewide.
Escargot can count votes more swiftly than Californians. Pundit Nate Silver calls this “failed state shit.” He observed this week via X: “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.”
Silver and Eli McKown-Dawson elaborated, “Colombia held a presidential election on Sunday [May 30], and 99.98% of the result was in on Monday morning. Japan also counts most of its votes overnight. And in the UK (not exactly a poster child for state capacity), you can generally expect to have calls for all 650 parliamentary seats the morning after the election.”