California Democrats have pulled off a trifecta of political infamy

Well done, California Democrats.We weren’t sure you could do it, but you came through.In just one primary election you managed to pull off a rare trifecta of political infamy for the Golden State: the embarrassment of a vote-counting system that takes so long it would have looked obsolete in colonial Virginia; the shame of an election process that invites deep suspicion about the integrity of the democratic order at a time of historically low public trust; and the misery of an outcome that just about guarantees the same misrule by the same people responsible for the dysfunction and chaos that is steadily bleeding the state dry. Last month, Gavin Newsom issued a call to election officials across the state. “We must continue building confidence in our elections and ensure that not only every vote is counted but every vote is trusted,” he wrote, hailing new rules and procedures that were supposed to speed up the vote counting. How’s that working out for you?The state that is home to companies whose technologies can perform the most complex tasks in nanoseconds was still counting votes a week after the polls closed.To Gov.Newsom and his party, this is progress. To the rest of the planet, it just looks like a joke.  Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton was right to say that “the world is laughing” at California’s snail-paced ballot counting, but for Californians, it’s no laughing matter. By midnight in Florida on election night, almost all the votes are counted and results declared. In California, they’re barely getting started. For a state already losing the reputation battle to more dynamic, nimbler rivals, the electoral shambles is more evidence that California is failing. But it’s not just embarrassing. It undermines faith in democracy itself.There’s no hard evidence of widespread fraud in this month’s primary, but the way California conducts its election seems almost designed to undermine public trust in the process...