The spectacle unfolding in California, where the final tally of votes appears to require an act of God and a small army of election lawyers to resolve, is a gift to those who cherish the quiet dignity of British democracy. While the Golden State plays out a dreary sitcom of missing ballots, delayed counts, and partisan bickering over dropped-off envelopes, we on this side of the Atlantic can afford a smug puff on our figurative pipes. Our electoral system, with its quaint First Past the Post and a neat, tidy count on the night, remains the gold standard of democratic efficiency.
The Californian farce is a textbook illustration of what happens when a society becomes so enamoured of 'accessibility' and 'flexibility' that it sacrifices the fundamental principle: a clear, decisive result. They have vote-by-mail so generous that ballots trickle in for days, weeks even. They have same-day registration, multiple drop boxes, and a bureaucracy so bloated that even the most mundane count becomes a saga. The result is not greater participation but a perpetual state of uncertainty. While they debate the legitimacy of a few thousand disputed ballots, the loser of the presidency himself, Joe Biden, won the 2020 election by tens of thousands of votes in key states. Today the farce continues, with Governor Gavin Newsom’s recall election being the latest example: a circus of competing deadlines and judicial interventions.
Contrast this with the British model. On election night, the nation tunes in to see returning officers in town halls across the land, piling up ballot papers on trestle tables, and delivering a result by breakfast time. There is drama, yes, but there is finality. The system is not perfect: the gerrymandering of constituency boundaries through history, the dominance of two parties, the occasional hung parliament. But it works. It yields a government, not a protracted negotiation. It fosters accountability: the party that wins the most seats forms the executive, and it can be turfed out in five years if it fails. The continental European obsession with proportional representation, which often leads to coalitions that stitch themselves together in backroom deals, is a lesson in how to mire governance in perpetual compromise.
The Californian model, with its endless layers of local jurisdictions and its postal ballot bonanza, is the logical conclusion of a culture that mistrusts institutions and adores process over outcome. It is the democracy of the selfie, not the democracy of the ballot. And it is a warning: the more we complicate the simple act of voting, the more we open the door to chaos and, worst of all, to the perception of illegitimacy. Already, the right in America is using these prolonged counts to cry fraud. The left responds by claiming the delays are necessary for 'civil rights'. The public, caught in the crossfire, loses faith.
Britain’s system, by contrast, has its flaws, but it retains the crucial element of finality. We do not have to wait two weeks to know who will govern us. We do not have to endure a thousand legal challenges over a few hundred ballots in a state of 40 million. We have a simple rule: you mark your X on a piece of paper, you put it in a box, and by the time you wake up, you know who your Prime Minister is. That is not just efficiency. It is the bedrock of stability. And as California once again becomes a laughingstock, we should thank our lucky stars that we inherited the Mother of Parliaments, not the Father of Referendums. The gold standard? It remains firmly in British hands.
