This week, the nation watched as California grappled again with the ordinarily straightforward task of counting votes in an election. While large states such as Florida declare election winners within 24 hours, California may take up to two weeks to count all the votes.
Even Los Angeles cannot count its votes in the time of large states despite giving the Clerk an annual budget of $336 million and a $448,179 a year salary with the help of 1,100 budgeted positions.
In most states, voters would be outraged by the incompetence, waste, and inefficiency. However, in the Golden State, voters shrug, as if they can demand no more from their elected officials than subpar performance.
Call it the Politics of Low Expectations and California is the model for the nation.
For years, my students have asked me what the secret is to a successful marriage approaching four decades (For full disclosure, there is an ongoing contractual dispute over my counting eight years of monogamous dating — leading to two dates on our anniversary cakes). The answer is simple. I reduced her expectations so low that I have exceeded them on a daily basis.
That began with our eloping on New Year’s Eve. We were married after an actual shotgun wedding where the clearly expectant teenage bride’s family was screaming profanities at the teenage groom. After paying $50 and using my high school ring for a wedding ring, we stepped out on the street of Old Town Alexandria as a drunk was retching in the gutter. That left only room for improvement.
On any given day, my wife is simply grateful that I have not traded the house and car for a handful of magic beans.
California Democrats seem to have applied my approach to matrimony to politics, creating a politician’s dream voter with few expectations.
That is most evident with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s infamous high-speed train to nowhere.
In 2008, voters were promised a 500-mile High-Speed train running from San Francisco to Los Angeles for $33 billion. It is now projected to cost somewhere between $126 billion and $231 billion. After roughly two decades, no track has been laid, and the current plan is to focus on building a track between Bakersfield and Merced.
Without any track to display, Newsom recently stood before a freight train on an existing track to insist that his train is moving speedily along.
One would think that citizens would be coming for their leaders with torches and pitchforks. Instead, there is a collective shrug as if it is perfectly normal to spend more than the entire budget of Amtrak on a non-existent train.
The same leaders have burned billions in other boondoggles, including a massive solar power farm that produced energy at a higher cost and incinerated thousands of birds a year.
California is facing a growing crisis of rising homelessness, dismal education scores, and an exodus of business and wealthy taxpayers. It has also imposed taxes that make gas the most expensive in the nation while suppressing its own energy industry.
Now, after many voters took the unprecedented step of voting for Republican candidates for governor and L.A. mayor, citizens will wait for weeks to learn the results of an election that would have been called days ago by third-world countries.
The same politics of low expectations are evident in other states. In New York City, voters just shrug when told that they have a budget rivaling that of the entire state of Florida, resulting in awful educational, infrastructure, and other conditions. Voters have watched as wealthy taxpayers have taken their money and jobs to other states.
In return, figures like Mayor Zohran Mamdani promise state-run grocery stores, which will cost tens of millions of dollars to build and operate at a loss.
In Minnesota, elected officials allowed billions to be stolen in fraud while businesses fled a state rife with rioting and homelessness.
In virtually every major city from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York, public schools are spending massive amounts on education to graduate many students who lack basic proficiency in English and Math. In Baltimore, a student failed all but three of his classes and was ranked in the top half of his graduating class.
Yet, voters reelected the same leaders who have denied generations any real opportunity for advancement. While other countries maintain superior school systems at a fraction of the cost, urban voters cast their ballots like lemmings for the same party and politicians.
In states like California, politics has long been run on Henry Ford’s pitch that you can have any color Model T so long as it is black. This election seemed to offer voters something they had not seen in many years: a real choice between a Republican governor and an L.A. mayor.
As California slowly counts its votes, the odds still heavily favor the continuation of California as a one-party state. Poor services, rising crime, rampant homelessness, hundreds of billions in waste and other failures are treated as virtually inevitable. The result is an electorate that only a politician would love: passive voters who expect little from their government and receive even less.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
A few thoughts on the post. First, I think Professor Turley should have mentioned and discussed the differences in the voting and counting systems in California and Florida that contribute to the timing of the voting results in the two states and would welcome the Professor to do that in a updated post, another post, or as a commenter. Perhaps there is a happy medium between the two systems. Second, it appears hard to please the Professor — he doesn’t like “rage”and now he complains about a “shrug”. Third, of course dating doesn’t count in marriage anniversary.
When politicians view moral posturing as the highest priority of their jobs, the traditional concern for competence is forgotten. Thus blue states and cities are on a course to failure.
Just in case everyone forgot. Today is D-DAY
I’m sure george will come along and claim it’s not
Calif is great. Not for this family
___________
A 28-year-old man was arrested in Modesto, California, on May 28, 2026, for the fatal stabbings of three generations of the same family: his 23-year-old former partner, their 2-week-old baby, and the 54-year-old grandmother. The tragic incident has left a surviving toddler in the care of child protective services.
The guy is an Illegal with a long rap sheet.
This comes up each election… it is a one-party state, this is how they maintain control, this is what Dems want for America… ONE PARTY RULE… things done their way. We are watching two hard working guys slip from being voted into positions… even the Mayor’s race…. the distant third placer is going to surpass the 2nd … and Bass stays…. this is the future of America, they’re going to wipe out the Electoral Vote, states will send all votes to the popular vote leader, going to add two new states, more house members, 4 new senators, adios to the filibuster and it never stops… ‘the takers are out numbering the givers’, those that don’t work will protest/riot for more. God Bless us all Mr. Turley
“Voters have watched as wealthy taxpayers have taken their money and jobs to other states.”
This has been going on nationwide since Reagan broke the Republican party away from fiscal conservatism into smoke and mirrors financing and the process is the off-shoring of American jobs to China and countries in Southeast Asia. The wealthy “taxpayers” also avoid paying what used to be an acceptable tax rate, when America Was Great, of 90% by purchasing House Representatives, Senators, and, recently, an old guy who cannot stay awake in important meetings but is very concerned about having muscular men perform for him.
It seems a minor oversight, but is most likely intentional, to note that there were 61 candidates for the Gubernatorial primary on the California ballot. It might also be worth noting that California voting law allows a 7 day window to receive mail-in ballots after Election Day, though they must be postmarked on or before Election Day.
Stylistically, the words “waste” and “inefficiency” mean the same thing in the context they are used. Might as well unload the thesaurus bucket and take ownership of the paucity of ideas that leads to padding the essay to meet word count.
There is a question about this:
“New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution”
What are the weekly sales figures since the book was published and how many total copies were sold through traditional book sellers and not direct from the publisher to buyers who do not sell other books. NYT apparently counts all the pre-orders as sales only during the first week, skewing the results.
We do know the Gov of Calif bought his own books to make it look like folks wanted to buy his BS
Ahh…life and love on the “mean streets” of Old Town Alexandria, VA 🥰
I grew up there. Good times.
Live in Cali now and I have repeatedly told my wife and everyone who asks not to get too excited about this Pratt summer…there is no way this state will allow anyone other than their handpicked lackeys anywhere near the levers of power and money here.
The voting system is designed to allow maximum opportunity to cheat in the counting.
Daniel: yes. One of the simplest changes we could consider (borrowing from evidence practice) is more acute ‘chain of custody’ tallying (catching oddities and peculiarities, and verifying specific RESULT counts for each individual candidate, from the last handler (human or electronic) to the next one on the way up, each step of the way, There appears to be so much more wrongdoing there, than in worrying about individual voter ID (important but not seismic in adding to fraud totals).
*I know that people may read my comment and think well, that’s already being done, duh!
Well apparently not up to par. Do we really think the sporadic, individual ID cheaters or those who vote more than once are the ones weighting the scales? Methinks not.
Lin, evertything you suggest they should be doing is exactly what they do. When you say “appears” you are already making assumptions. Not fact based observations.
X, you’re still smarting from being smacked down yesterday, aren’t you?
Ye CA wants 36 day worth.
You have proof that cheating is going on?
You have proof that you are not the AI-clown impersonating as X and picking up all the words you like from this blog and regurgitating them in your own comments? Can AI be that dumb?
I
California Dreamin’
When we were kids, my father would send mother and the girls to California while he and my brother would take off on fishing trips. We’d go to Disneyland, Chinatown, the Brown Derby, Griffith Park, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (where all the movie stars left their fingerprints in the squares along the walkway). We’d go to the huge San Diego zoo and ride the trolley cars down the hills in San Francisco. Collected sea shells for my aquarium, collected wall pennants (made of felt?) for my bedroom walls, postcards, shot photos with my new little compact camera, and slept at night with my new transistor radio under my pillow (Beach Boys, Eagles, Mamas and the Papas, Fleetwood Mac). Fresh orange juice every morning. Had my first taco. Grandmother had a very nice Hispanic housekeeper who spoke little English and lived in the back and Grandmother paid her well. She stayed for many years and she played card games with us, we had fun with her. Good manners, politeness, civility abounded among all. Ah, life was good.
Mom did not worry about us. No drag queens reading stories to us at the library, no flash mobs breaking into the shopping malls, no men holding hands and kissing each other on the street, no gunfire on the beaches at night, No Pride parades, no riots, no car bombs, Life was good. California was great. Where did we go wrong?
Here’s to all who share those simpler, good times!
(and no, we were not “rich” or “elite.” We were just raised with a good value system that taught us right from wrong, and appreciation for others.)
except “men holding hands and kissing each other on the street”
do you and your wife hold hands and kiss each on the street, behind a building, at home?
The sick folks always jump out
Try San Fran where the men gerk-off during the gays day.
It can get far worse than holding hands
Anonymous at 11:37: So sorry if I insulted you and your husband. That was not my intention. I have gay friends. They are with me on this and don’t feel the need for in-your-face politics and tactics.
C’mon man. The California voters are so tired of the Democrat officeholders that, in some cases, this time they will vote for different Democrats.
You can vote your way into Communism but you can never vote your way out of it.
@Anonymous
Damn straight, again illustrating the extraordinary ignorance and entitlement of progressives under 45, among others.
And California is fast becoming the first communist state in America. So sad!