Editorial: California’s election results require patience. That’s a good thing.
Two-thirds of the electorate still hasn’t voted, so I’ll continue to report on California’s election results the way the Legislature has prescribed for me for the past decade: It’s still very early.
The reason?
In the early years, we had to wait to make sure we’d counted everyone by Election Day, which meant that in some rural counties where the polls had opened at 8:59 a.m., those precincts wouldn’t get reported until later.
In counties where the polls opened much later — before 8:59 a.m., for example, in Los Angeles and San Diego, then by 8:55 a.m., in Santa Clara County — we had to account for everyone who went to an early poll, and who weren’t turned away by the polling place itself until that time. Those unregistered voters don’t show up on the provisional rolls when the polls open, and we have to wait for those provisional ballots to be counted before we can know for certain whether they voted.
In those early years, in other words, we had to be extremely patient, and very careful.
That’s changed. Now, with all the voting happening the way it is, we don’t have to be so patient or careful.
And that’s a good thing.
On Tuesday, after the primary elections, we’re going to know whether the result was the same in every election we’ve already had, whether the electorate got its votes out the right way. I think that’s what this election will be about.
We had a good election, so don’t get upset.
California is going to keep going for two more years, with the same governor and Legislature. That’s going to be a great thing for the state, the union and a lot of us.
If we had stayed together, a lot of the bad things that happened this past year might not have happened. We might have taken a few more steps to keep this country from getting into another war. We might have taken more bold action to restore our nation’s confidence in our allies and to make sure we stand by our friends and our
