Commentary: California can have both easy voting and quicker election results. Here's how

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SACRAMENTO — Every two years, elite athletes compete in the Olympics, biennial plants — like carrots and onions — produce seeds and people across America look on with consternation and mounting impatience as California counts its election ballots.The prolonged tally has become as much a part of electioneering in the Golden State as wall-to-wall advertising, high-flown promises and overstuffed mailboxes groaning beneath the weight of endless campaign fliers.The tabulation — which can last weeks past election day — is the product, in large part, of a commendable objective: Encouraging as many people as possible to vote.California, which mails a ballot to every eligible voter, ranks near the top of states in the ease of its elections.That’s something to be celebrated.

Voting is a way to help steer the direction of our state and nation and invest, as an active participant, in its future.Yay, participatory democracy!Unfortunately, the lag time between election day and the final results has led to all sorts of wild, unfounded claims, peddled mainly by Republicans seeking to curry favor with the sore-losing President Trump by parroting his conspiratorial gabbling.The state’s elections are on the up and up, but you wouldn’t know it from Republicans like Mike Johnson, who keeps perpetuating falsehoods.The House speaker knows better.

Or should.“They hold the elections open for weeks after election day,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said recently, falsely suggesting that chicanery cost the GOP three House seats in California in 2024.“It looks on its face to be fraudulent.”That’s a lot of, um, hooey.

There is no rampant cheating or election fraud in California.Period.

Full stop.Still, those sorts of phony statements have deeply diminished faith in our elections and our increasingly rickety democracy.So — what if it were possible to preserve California’s frien...