OPINION: America needs an Election Day, not an Election Month
Prolonged vote-counting in states like California is getting out of control. The longer the process continues like this, the more distrust officials are needlessly stirring up.
Opinion-editorial by Summer Lane | June 8, 2026
It’s been almost one week since California’s primary elections, and the state is still scrambling to tally up its votes in the integral gubernatorial race and the high-profile mayoral primary.
As of Monday afternoon, both races still haven’t been fully tabulated – a full six days after Election Day. And, in a curious turn of events, both Republican candidates, gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton and Los Angeles mayor candidate Spencer Pratt, have been ousted from their spots on the leaderboard after mail-in ballots continued to be counted…and counted…and counted.
“Nearly a week into California’s election shambles,” Hilton said in a statement. “The world is laughing at our inability to count votes in a timely manner. Where is Gavin Newsom? No comment except to reject my plan to speed things up. We deserve better than a do-nothing, checked-out governor. Time for change!”
On Monday, Pratt – an outlier candidate in Los Angeles and a political disrupter who stands to challenge the status quo of failure in beautiful Southern California – acknowledged the situation.
“Folks, we’re dealing with a fraction of a percentage point difference, there’s still hundreds of thousands of votes outstanding, and LA officials have given us the next 3 weeks to count!” Pratt posted on X. “Let’s git-r-dun!”
Most Americans are old enough to remember a time in U.S. election history when Election Day solidified final election results on the same night. Votes were received, counted, and announced. That was the end of it.
But over the past several years, particularly as the widespread use of mail-in ballots has become more popular with different states, vote-counting processes have become protracted, clunky, and, frankly, chaotic.
Is it too much to ask that Californians’ votes get tallied on Election Day? Anything less than a swift result only serves to fuel suspicion, conspiracy, and distrust.
The Constitutional debate
There is considerable debate around the use of mail-in ballots – and for good reason. The U.S. Constitution legally established a day for the “popular election” or “general election,” as a singular day – every four years for president and vice president, every two years for representatives of Congress, and every six years for senators. This keeps elections for lawmakers on an even-keeled rotation.
There is a robust conversation about whether Election Day should be restricted to a singular day, as it has been traditionally, or whether the prolonged grace period for counting late mail-in ballots should be part of that so-called “Election Day” window.
According to Article I, Section Four of the U.S. Constitution, states are allowed to set their own “times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives,” but Congress is allowed to alter such state regulations. The Constitution Center explains it thusly:
“Congress may pass federal laws regulating congressional elections that automatically displace (‘preempt’) any contrary state statutes, or enact its own regulations concerning those aspects of elections that states may not have addressed. The Framers of the Constitution were concerned that states might establish unfair election procedures or attempt to undermine the national government by refusing to hold elections for Congress. They empowered Congress to step in and regulate such elections as a self-defense mechanism.”
Certainly, it appears that states such as California have taken the Elections Clause as literally as possible and established the “times and manner” for holding their elections as a very broad window. Why have an Election Day when you can have an Election Week? But it begs the question: Is it really fair to continue to collect late mail-in ballot votes, especially when, in states like California, there is no form of voter identification allowed to ensure such ballots are valid in the first place?
If state officials wanted to make their election system look terrible, they certainly have done so by allowing this mail-in ballot system to continue. It appears inefficient, chaotic, and unsecured, despite protestations from politicians who swear up and down that everything is perfectly safe and totally normal.
President Donald Trump has commented on the California election process multiple times within the last week, noting that mail-in ballots are being “found,” and alleging that “cheating” was occurring in these prolonged processes.
“They didn’t ‘find’ anything,” Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office retorted on social media. “These are legitimate ballots post-marked by Election Day arriving to legitimate ballot counting centers — as has been standard practice for years and a process that takes place in numerous states regardless of the party in power.”
Their claim doesn’t exactly assuage voters’ frustrations that, at the very least, there should be a final result readily available in key races by the close of Election Day. It is possible because American elections used to function this way.
No matter how many times officials try to spin it, Americans aren’t dumb.
Counting votes shouldn’t be that hard, and it shouldn’t take this long.
SCOTUS may change the game
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments earlier this year in a key case (Watson v. RNC), regarding a law in Mississippi that allows mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by that date and received within five days.
The court is expected to issue a decision on this case between June and July – and if the justices strike down the legality of allowing a grace period for counting for mail-in ballots, it would reset the landscape for elections in places like California, as the state would be heavily pressured to get its state voting regulations in line with federal rules.
Imagine: No more truckloads of late ballots, counted for days after Election Day is over. No more waking up the next morning and finding a totally unexpected candidate in the lead, due to an early-morning batch of unexpected mail-in ballots from who-knows-where.
It would tighten up the election processes and restore considerable voter trust in the system – something that is very much needed.
Since the 2024 presidential election, U.S. voter trust in elections has dropped by 17 points, according to a national survey from the Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections at the University of California, San Diego.
What better way to restore that broken trust with voters than to ensure that ballots are simply counted on time? Is that so much to ask?
In America, voters need an Election Day, not an Election Month. It’s time to get back to basics and make voting simple again.
Photo: Adobe Stock
