Breaking news from the Golden State. Where the sun always shines but the vote count moves at the pace of a pensioner in a mobility scooter. California is taking so long to count its ballots that British electoral officials have reportedly been dispatched to study the system. One can only assume they are researching how to make their own elections equally interminable and opaque. Perhaps the British officials are hoping to bring back the same level of efficiency that gave us the poll tax. Or maybe they just fancy a holiday on the taxpayer.
Let us examine this farcical situation with the seriousness it deserves. Which is none. The American electoral process is a beautiful mess. A glorious, bureaucratic, contradictory mess. In California, they have mail-in ballots, drop boxes, and a counting procedure that involves what appears to be a team of sloths on Valium. Meanwhile, the world watches. Or rather, the world is forced to wait. For weeks. For months. The whole thing is a poignant metaphor for democracy itself: promising, but ultimately an exercise in watching paint dry.
The British officials are there to 'study' the system. Study what, exactly? The art of delay? The precise alchemy of turning a straightforward tally into a constitutional crisis? Or perhaps they are there to learn how to spend millions of pounds on new voting machines that will still break down on election day. Because that is the British way. We don't do efficiency. We do queueing. We do complaining. And now, apparently, we do importing methods of administratively disaster from across the pond.
Let us not forget the sheer absurdity of the situation. In a country that can land a rocket on a moving platform in the ocean, it cannot count a piece of paper with a tick on it. Not without a fight. Not without lawyers. Not without a protracted legal battle that makes the Dreyfus affair look like a swift resolution. The fact that British officials are 'studying' this system is like sending a health inspector to a sewage farm. You are not going to learn much beyond the fact that it is messy and best avoided.
But of course, it is all for the best. The delays are not incompetence. They are a feature, not a bug. They allow for 'scrutiny'. For 'transparency'. For 'making sure every vote is counted'. Which in practice means: 'We have no idea what we are doing and we are making it up as we go along.' And the British are right there, note pads in hand, learning how to import this chaos into their own system. Heaven help us all.
So raise a glass to California. The state where the votes are never finished, the recount is always pending, and the officials are perpetually bewildered. And to the British electoral officials: good luck. You will need it. Because if you think the American system is broken, just wait until you try to implement it in a country where the tea is always cold and the queue is always too long. This will be a study in futility. A masterclass in procrastination. And a glorious reminder that democracy is a wonderful ideal, provided you never actually have to count the bastards.
