As the Guardian reports, California’s snail-paced vote count is not a sign of election fraud but the result of a multi-step verification system. Every voter receives a mail-in ballot, which is checked electronically and by human reviewers for signatures. If errors are found, voters have 22 days to correct them – a process that maximizes accuracy but costs speed.
Donald Trump used the delay to claim, just one day after polls closed, that Democrats were trying to “steal” the governor and Los Angeles mayoral elections. The US Department of Justice then sent a federal prosecutor to observe the count in Los Angeles. Republicans have long accused the state that the slow count and shifting results are signs of election manipulation.
Even prominent Democrats like outgoing Governor Gavin Newsom are increasingly concerned that the slowness undermines trust in elections – at a time when conspiracy theories spread via social media and directly from the White House. Experts disagree, however: “There aren’t a lot of people who would say, ‘No, I’d rather have known who won faster than have my vote counted,'” Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., told the Guardian. “So what’s the rush? The focus should be on making voting as easy as possible.”
California has the most registered voters of any US state, and the overwhelming majority vote by mail. The system is designed to prevent small errors from invalidating ballots – a trade-off between speed and accuracy that in practice leads to long election nights.
EuroPulse reported on June 4, 2026, about the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon and Trump’s efforts for an Iran deal (link).
Source: www.theguardian.com
