Long before the existence of modern technology — before the internet or even television — Americans quickly learned the results of major elections. By the late 1800s, telegraphs made it possible for people to read results in the next day’s newspapers. By the 1920s, radio networks reported outcomes on election night. Even in close races, with a notable exception of the Bush versus Gore contest of 2000, American voters usually knew within a day who had won the presidency, control of Congress and most other major offices. For more than a century, the rapid resolution of U.S. elections was the norm.
No longer. In each of the past three congressional election cycles, Americans waited at least a week to find out whether Democrats or Republicans controlled the House of Representatives. The main reason has been California, the nation’s most populous state, home to 52 House districts. It allows mail-in ballots to arrive up to seven days after Election Day and counts ballots with agonizing slowness. After this year’s midterms, the country may once again spend days waiting for California.
California adopted its rules with the admirable intention of maximizing voting access. But the system has failed. Its benefits are close to nil: Turnout in California has fallen farther behind the national average since the state changed its rules. And the costs of the new system are real. When elections are quickly decided, it builds confidence in the democratic process. When uncertainty lingers for days, Americans wonder why government today can often seem less competent than it once was.
California’s delays also play into the hands of bad-faith political leaders, including President Trump, who lie about vote counting and fraud to sow doubt in any election outcome they do not like. (For example, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, claimed that ballots counted after the 2024 Election Day in California “magically whittled away” the leads of three Republican candidates.) To be clear: Only the people who tell these lies are responsible for them. But California is playing into the hands of the misinformation peddlers for no good reason.
Several other states also sometimes take days to count their votes, including Arizona, Nevada, New York and Washington. They and California are outliers compared with other states and other high-income democracies, which count ballots both quickly and accurately. Lawmakers in these outlier states should change their systems to resolve elections quickly. Ideally, lawmakers would act in time for this year’s congressional elections. If they are unable to, they should make the changes before the 2028 elections.
California’s slow counting of votes has its roots in a 2014 law. Until then, the state required mail-in ballots to arrive by Election Day. That year, California introduced a three-day grace period for any ballots postmarked by Election Day, in response to the closure of some U.S. Postal Service facilities. The state has since extended the period to seven days. The goal is to ensure that even a highly unusual mail delay does not disenfranchise anybody.
The changes have not accomplished that goal. Consider: In 2012, when ballots had to be received by Election Day, 0.5 percent of ballots were rejected because of lateness — and the share was an identical 0.5 percent in 2022, when the grace period was seven days. How could that be? As any college student (or journalist) knows, human beings tend to procrastinate until a deadline. The longer grace period led more voters to mail their ballots later.
California exacerbates the problem by using an onerous process for confirming signatures on mail-in ballots and taking days to count many votes. As a result, outcomes remain unclear for days. In other states that count votes slowly, the details vary, but they all involve mail-in or drop-off ballots.
The crucial point is that none of these systems are superior to those in the many states that count their ballots rapidly. Slow-counting states do not have higher turnout, on average. Nor do they have more secure elections; voter fraud is extremely rare nationwide.
California’s leaders are making a mistake that Democrats have made in a range of policy areas over the past decade. In the name of laudable goals like equity and access, they have adopted policies that may initially sound sensible — in this instance, trying to protect every mail-in ballot — but that end up being counterproductive because they undermine the government’s effectiveness. The slow counting of votes is a classic example of the perfect being the enemy of the good.
Defenders of the system argue that it would be a mistake to change the rules in response to baseless Republican conspiracy theories. Some California officials have gone so far as to suggest they do not care that Americans must wait days to learn election outcomes. National impatience is “not our problem,” California’s secretary of state, Shirley Weber, said in 2024.
Neither of these arguments is valid. It makes no sense to cling to a subpar system because it happens to be subject to unfair fearmongering. When Mr. Trump’s critics automatically adopt the opposite stance of his, even when it is wrong on the merits, they often end up doing him a political favor.
Several states offer better models, with Colorado having arguably the best. Like California, Colorado mails every registered voter a paper ballot weeks before Election Day. It then gives its citizens many options for returning the ballots. The state encourages voters to take their ballots to one of more than 400 drop boxes, which are open 24 hours a day for more than two weeks, or mail back the ballots, as long as they arrive by 7 p.m. on Election Day. People can also vote the traditional way, at a polling place.
Colorado offers an eight-day grace period for some voters, such as military troops stationed outside the state. Yet their share of the vote is so small that they affect only the closest of races, which would probably be subject to a weekslong recount anyway. Colorado gets the balance right: easy access to voting, without orienting the entire system around a tiny number of voters who might theoretically be subject to an extreme postal delay.
Colorado’s results are impressive. In 2014, the first elections after it adopted its system, turnout jumped nearly three percentage points even as nationwide turnout fell more than four percentage points. In 2024, 73 percent of eligible Colorado residents voted — a higher share than in California (62 percent), Arizona, Nevada, New York or Washington. Colorado also counts ballots quickly, and the outcome of almost every race is clear on election night.
Some California officials have claimed that their state’s large population makes it impossible for them to be so efficient, but that is as unpersuasive as their other excuses. Larger states have more tax dollars available for election administration. Florida, for example, counted 99 percent of its votes by the end of election night in 2024.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California has recently begun to speak out about the importance of Democratic-run states offering a counterpoint to the chaotic, antidemocratic approach of the Trump administration. He has said that California should provide “a policy blueprint for others to follow,” and he has taken promising, if tentative, steps on housing construction and other areas. No doubt, his motives are partly personal, intended to help his presidential ambitions. So be it. Personal ambition sometimes inspires productive change.
Here, then, is one more item for Mr. Newsom’s agenda in his final year as governor: Bring California’s elections out of the pretelegraph era and back into the 21st century.
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