The California Primary
Imagine supporting the ten-year vote count
Primary season is here. The 2026 midterms are in full swing, and Americans will go to the polls in November in order to vote in a new Congress as well as numerous local elections. All of our elections will be conducted in a timely manner in order for the voting populace to keep confidence in the electoral systems our country enjoys.
Well, you would think so.
Behold, the State of California. America’s largest by population and economy. The state that ought to be held to the highest standards of all the states. In California, our largest economy, you would think that their election system would be top tier.
You’d be wrong.
On Tuesday, June 2nd, California started their primary election. California has a silly system called a jungle primary, where every candidate runs regardless of political party and the top two vote getters advance to the general election. This allows for a situation where two members of the same political party could run against each other in the general election by “locking out” candidates of the opposing party.
It’s a clever way to suppress the opposition party. If two members of the same party are candidates for governor, the opposing party’s voters will be less likely to turn out and support down ballot candidates, strengthening the ticket for the party at the top. But alas, technically it is democratic, so it is allowed.
This is unlike a regular primary system where each party would have their own inner party primaries, and whoever wins one party’s primary goes on to face the winner of the opposing party’s primary in the general election. This is a fair system that allows for voters who identify with either party to be represented and not have a fear of their party being “locked out” as they would in California.
The worst part about California’s “jungle primary” is that it extends to all statewide offices, so if you are a candidate for office in the state, you have to compete with multiple different people with differing party affiliations in order to figure out which two are actually going to go to the general election.
You would think that this would be bad enough, and that it couldn’t get any worse.
Yet again, you’d be wrong.
California also has a system in place where they allow for ballots to be counted up to thirty days after election day. The broad use of mail-in-voting (up to 80% of votes in the state) requires each vote to be counted meticulously. So, what ends up happening is we get small batches of results every day.
They cite population as to why it takes so long to do this, but I call bull on this because I live in Florida, the third largest state by population, and we get all our votes in and counted by 9 PM on election night.
That wasn’t always the case though. In 2000, Florida was at the center of the Bush/Gore recount and delay kerfuffle that saw us mocked every election year until 2020 because it took us a month to deliver results, and America didn’t know who our President was going to be until mid-December of 2000.
While we never had an episode like 2000 again, we were one of the slowest vote counters in the nation. Until 2019, when Governor DeSantis realized that this problem was localized in two areas, and got rid of Susan Butcher, the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, as well as Brenda Snipes, the Broward County Supervisor of Elections. Ever since they were fired, we haven’t had any issues. Take that for the people who say this stuff isn’t deliberate.
This isn’t a partisan issue either. Butcher was allowed to run rampant since 2009, under two Republican administrations. Snipes was allowed to run rampant since 2003 and was appointed by Jeb Bush, a Republican. They both ran elections in heavily populated counties in Southern Florida. Yet since they have been fired, elections have run smoothly, so population isn’t the issue.
Perhaps if California adopted our voting system, which has been proven to work in heavily populated areas, people wouldn’t be as upset as they are over their primary system, if they absolutely must have the jungle primary. People are more likely to trust their elections when they are done in a timely and efficient manner.
I also don’t understand why this has to be a partisan issue. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or whatever, if you are a believer in republican values, you should want your elections to be as smooth as possible. No, the only reason such incompetency is tolerated is because it benefits one particular side.
And as long as that is the case, the US, a first world country, will have to tolerate third world vote counting and primary systems in our elections.
How you can support my writing. Thank you for reading.
Tip via Buy Me A Coffee
Liking and restacking to reach a wider audience
Becoming a paid subscriber