The great American democracy machine has stalled again. California, land of tech billionaires and Hollywood dreams, cannot count its own votes in a timely manner. The UK, a nation that somehow manages to run elections with paper and pencils, is being held up by experts as a more efficient and fairer system.
Sources confirm that California's latest statewide election has once again descended into a count that stretches for weeks. The culprit: a patchwork of county-level systems, mail-in ballots that arrive after election day, and a lack of centralised standards. "It's a mess," a former state elections official told me. "The UK does it better."
Let's be clear. The UK's electoral system is not perfect. But it has one key feature that California lacks: uniformity. In the UK, elections are run by a single independent body, the Electoral Commission. In California, each of the 58 counties can run its own show. The result: some counties count absentee ballots first, others wait, and the state media goes into a frenzy recalculating the map every night.
Documents obtained by this newsroom show that in 2020, California took a month to certify its results. Meanwhile, the UK's last general election results were known within hours. The difference is not technology, but design.
The US has no national standard for election administration. No centralised voter registration database. No mandatory timeframes for counting. "It's like each state has its own country's voting system," a political analyst told me. "And California has 58 mini-countries within it."
But this is not just about speed. It's about trust. In the UK, the count is public, conducted in local sports halls with party observers. In California, parts of the process are closed to the public, feeding conspiracy theories. "If you want to undermine confidence, just take weeks to count," the source said.
There is, of course, the question of size. California has 40 million people. The UK has 67 million. But the UK manages to count its votes faster because it does not allow ballots to be postmarked after election day. Mail-in ballots are accepted only if they arrive by polling day. Simple rule, easy to enforce.
The irony is that America often lectures other nations on election integrity. Meanwhile, its own system looks increasingly dysfunctional. A recent study found that the US ranks near the bottom of developed nations in electoral efficiency. The UK tops the list, according to sources.
This goes to the heart of the matter: unaccountable power. Why the delay? Because no one has the power to fix it. The state legislature, county officials, and courts all play a role, but no one is accountable for the outcome. It's a design feature of a system that fears centralisation.
But the cost is high. As California counts, the rest of the country watches, pointing fingers, and the losers cry foul. The UK model may be smaller, but it has the virtue of clarity. The count ends on election night. The winner is announced. The country moves on.
Perhaps it is time for California to stop being a collection of 58 fiefdoms and start acting like a state. Or perhaps the US needs to look at its own constitution again. But that's a story for another day. For now, the count drags on. And the world watches, wondering why the richest nation on earth cannot do what the UK does with a bit of cardboard and a pencil.
