It's hard to overstate how much of an outlier California is for its slow vote-counting relative to literally any other state or almost any other industrialized democracy.
@Elex_Michaelson@FrankLuntz Why is California okay with this knowing it sows doubt into the minds of voters is what we should be asking. I hope you do Elex
What's more crazy is this is how the system is designed.
California INTENTIONALLY does not count ballots for weeks. And I think it explains the state's broader dysfunction.
Basically, California's voting rules are designed to maximize accessibility at all costs. ALL costs.
Ballots can arrive after Election Day. Signatures can be fixed if they are unclear. Provisional ballots get individually reviewed. Every edge case gets its own process.
And California doesn't trust technology or automation to solve these problems. Signatures are manually reviewed. Voters are contacted when issues arise. Humans review and re-review exceptions. The system is designed around minimizing the chance that a single valid ballot gets rejected.
Other countries count tens of millions of votes in hours, not weeks. They aren't using magic. They simply make different tradeoffs. They rely more on technology, set stricter deadlines, tolerate fewer exceptions, and accept that no system can perfectly accommodate every conceivable scenario.
California makes the opposite choice.
And it's the same philosophy that shows up in housing, infrastructure, permitting, schools, and government generally: endless process, endless exceptions, and worse results.