REFS, SUCCESSFULLY WORKED

During the 1992 presidential campaign, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Rich Bond, explained why Republicans incessantly accuse the media of liberal bias, using a sports metaphor.

"There is some strategy to it [bashing the ‘liberal’ media]. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is ‘work the refs.’ Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one."

Republicans don't just use this strategy to fight the media. They howl in outrage about anything in politics that doesn't go their way, suggesting that dark conspiracies are depriving them of the political dominance to which they're entitled.

They've been doing this on the California vote count, because an entirely predictable "red mirage" created the illusion that Spencer Pratt, a Republican candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, would qualify for the general election despite the fact that the city overwhelmingly votes Democratic. The ed board of The New York Times has now been successfully worked on this issue. It has responded to the GOP pressure campaign with this editorial:

Taking a Week to Count Votes Is Doing It Wrong

... There is no good reason that California takes so long to count votes....

With California refusing to change its system and a few other states having similar problems, the appropriate remedy is a federal law. That law should establish Election Day as the deadline for mail-in ballots to arrive and set basic standards for efficient vote counting.

Improving the efficiency of vote counting in California would be a good thing, but why can't the state allow voters to mail ballots by Election Day if it chooses? Why do we need a federal law to prevent that?

The editorial never tells us, apart from saying this:

It creates needless uncertainty about results (as has been the case with several races this year). It confuses ordinary voters and serves the interest of conspiracists, including President Trump, who spread lies about election fraud that is in fact virtually nonexistent.

So the reason California's deadline is bad is that Republican crackpots say it seems bad. There's no other reason. Yes, the ed board says the process "confuses voters," but it would be more accurate to say that Republicans take advantage of the process to deliberately and cynically confuse voters.

This editorial appears as the Times is reporting results from Maine's primaries, which took place yesterday. In the most newsworthy race, Graham Platner won the Democratic Senate primary with more than 70% of the vote, but in other key races -- the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial primaries, the Democratic congressional primary in Maine's 2nd District -- candidates are tightly bunched, with no clear winner. In each case, the Times tells us that the race

will be decided by ranked-choice voting, a process that usually takes a week or two.

But ... but ... but the ed board told me that having to wait a week or more for definitive results in California was a massive crisis for American democracy! Will there now be an editorial denouncing Maine's voting process?

Nahhh, for one simple reason: Unlike California, Maine has partisan primaries. Democrats and Republicans run separately. It's just as likely that candidates in Maine who seem to be leading on Election Night will lose their races when the process is completed, but the loser won't be a Republican in an all-parties primary, so Republicans aren't whining about Maine. Republicans aren't whining, so the Times isn't tut-tutting.

*****

Much of the Times editorial is devoted to the notion that Democrats should include an Election Day deadline in electoral reform legislation.

Congressional Democrats have long supported promising election reform bills, but they have generally opposed sensible deadlines for the arrival and counting of ballots. That is a mistake. Electoral reform is a natural issue for Democrats as they plan a legislative agenda for a possible House majority in 2027 and beyond....

The solution can start with Congress establishing a national deadline of Election Day for the arrival of mail-in ballots....

A federal election reform bill should also make it easier for people to vote in advance. It should set national standards for access to early voting and mail-in voting. Previous bills supported by Democrats — such as a 2022 bill named for John Lewis, which passed the House but failed in the Senate — contained these provisions.

This is delusional -- sure, in a better America, an election reform bill that becomes law might include provisions favored by both Democrats (ease of access to early voting) and Republicans (an Election Day deadline). But we don't live in that fantasy world. If you give Republicans some of what they want, they demand more and still condemn Democrats as radical-left extremists. We saw that when Democrats tried to compromise with Republicans on immigration in 2024 -- Democrats backed a bill full of Republican proposals, but Republicans rejected the bill anyway, then ran successfully on the slanderous charge that Democrats support "open borders."

It's likely that the Supreme Court will soon take this issue off the table by ruling, in a Mississippi case, that it's unconstitutional for states to allow ballots to arrive after Election Day. So what's the point of this editorial? The point is that Republicans believe that "Democrats are rigging elections -- look at California" is a potent argument right now, and the Times ed board, in a "moderate" way, is catapulting that propaganda.