Six hundred forty-two million votes! That would take a year to count. And if 642 million votes were cast in a California election, we wouldn’t know the result for four years. Maybe.

But in India, that’s how many votes were cast in the last national election in 2024. And despite some parts of the country experiencing temperatures above 120 degrees, the final result was known by the following morning.

You read that right: the following morning.

But in the largest state in the U.S., counting ballots in a timely fashion is apparently impossible. Take the latest gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral races as a prime example, where the final tally won’t be known until early July for an election held on June 2.

Less than 8 million votes were cast in the California governor’s race, or 634 million fewer votes registered in India two years ago.

Without getting too far into the weeds, California’s voting rules, or lack thereof, are patently ridiculous. For starters, mail-in votes are accepted up to one week after Election Day — despite early mail-in voting happening for weeks before then.

And it gets even more ludicrous: The postmarks can be personally handwritten by the sender.

“It’s insane. This election system that they’ve created here is just another monument to their uselessness, another version of high-speed rail,” noted Steve Hilton, the rightly frustrated Republican gubernatorial hopeful during an interview with Fox’s Laura Ingraham. Hilton was leading after Election Day but now is sitting in second place behind Democrat Xavier Baccera.

“I remember last time around, during the last elections we had here, I had a whistleblower who contacted me from a post office,” Hilton said. “They described how there were different buckets they were supposed to put the ballots in after they came in after Election Day, and they were explicitly told that it didn’t just have to be a postmark that was on or before Election Day that qualified. If the date was handwritten, that would be OK as well. And you think, ‘What?’ It’s just unbelievable. And, of course, that’s why so many people don’t believe the results. It undermines confidence.”

Precisely. It’s not about believing in conspiracies. It’s simply human nature. The longer the votes take to be tallied, the more suspicion increases among voters of the candidate most hurt.

Spencer Pratt voters know this feeling. The reality star ran what was arguably the best campaign imaginable in a deep-blue city such as Los Angeles, utilizing edgy and often hilarious AI video ads that became instant viral classics to capture the public’s attention at no cost while generating millions of views.

The Republican sat comfortably in second place after Election Day, leading councilwoman Nithya Raman by more than 8 percentage points and seemingly qualifying for the general election against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. It appeared we were headed toward a Bass-Pratt showdown, with even Raman providing what looked and sounded like a concession speech.

“I hope you know that everything, every person in this room is fighting for in this campaign has been about building a city that’s worthy of you, and every child in this city,” she said while shedding tears.

But something strange began happening as mail-in votes started coming in: Raman, in a distant third place, not Bass, started receiving the largest vote totals in dump after dump. Raman, a socialist, ran a seemingly invisible campaign until debating Pratt and Bass in May. And when the dust settled, one local NBC poll showed just 4% of those watching felt Raman won the debate, while 89% had Pratt winning.

Yet, a 50,000-vote dump last weekend showed Raman getting the lion’s share, outpacing Pratt by more than 13,000 votes and Bass by more than 4,000. By Sunday, Raman had overtaken Pratt and was declared to be in second place, sending her to the general.

“Two great Republican Candidates are being cheated, and so is America, which if the Dumocrats are able to fulfill their mission, great trouble and consternation will follow. Watch this ‘Election’ closely!!!” President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social.

On top of legally writing in a postmark on a mail-in ballot, there’s also an unintentionally hilarious list of “acceptable” forms of identification. They include a gym membership card, employer ID card, credit card, drug prescription, and insurance card.

Thankfully, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in California is requesting to audit California’s voter rolls, a request Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) office has curiously and swiftly declined.

“We have serious concerns about how California maintains its voter rolls,” wrote Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.

“There are open questions about whether the state is promptly removing deceased voters, people who have moved, and individuals convicted of disqualifying felonies,” he said. “On top of that, California allows third parties to collect and turn in ballots on voters’ behalf (a practice known as ballot harvesting) with few restrictions. This makes it difficult to track who actually received, completed, and submitted each ballot.

“For over a year, the Department of Justice has been trying to audit California’s voter rolls. Federal law gives the Attorney General the authority to review state voter files and confirm that only eligible U.S. citizens are voting in federal elections.”

It gets even more rancid after a federal lawsuit levied by nonprofit group Judicial Watch alleges that 870,000 dead people are still on the state’s voter rolls.

“Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections,” Judicial Watch founder Tom Fitton said. “And California and its counties must take immediate steps to clean the over 870,000 dirty names on the voting lists.”

Other states, including Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and New Mexico, all of which voted for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024, also rely heavily on mail-in ballots. The early voting periods are weeks ahead of every election, ballot harvesting is gospel, and elections also take far too long to decide.

“Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud,” concluded a 2005 report by President Jimmy Carter and James Baker III, President George H. W. Bush’s secretary of state.

COVID-19 is long gone. In-person voting should be the only option for everyone except elderly and sick people or U.S. military members. That’s it.

According to a recent University of California, San Diego, survey, only 60% of the public is very or somewhat confident that votes will be counted accurately nationwide in the 2026 midterm elections, marking a 17-point drop from the 77% who had high trust in the 2024 election.

That ain’t good. At all.

Florida has results for presidential contests the night of an election. So does Ohio. Two major red states run competently.

India can also count 640 million votes quickly.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AT 250: AMERICA’S MOST RADICAL IDEA

But California and other blue states are a much different story. But until they all allow audits, we’ll keep seeing trust in our elections continue to disintegrate.

For a party that vows to “save democracy,” it has a funny way of showing it.