American Elections Are a Joke
57 years ago, Americans went to the moon in four days. Californians would still be working on the countdown
On California election night last week, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman gave a rambling address C-SPAN still has listed as a “concession speech.” The first half explained the long odds faced by Raman:
They came at us with everything that they had. The corporate landlords, the city hall insiders, the corporations who have spent years making sure city hall worked for them and not for the people. These powerful interests spent millions of dollars against this little campaign… Then came the MAGA machine. They saw an opportunity in Los Angeles to buy a foothold in our beautiful city to advance a dark agenda. They poured money and from all over the country.
After explaining all the reasons she might not have delivered for “our gay and trans siblings,” Raman collapsed in tears. “I hope you know,” she said, hand over heart, “that everything, every person in this room is fighting for in this campaign has been about building a city that’s worthy of you!”
Raman was a distant third-place finisher that night. A week later she’s ahead of Republican Spencer Pratt, and may be the favorite to beat incumbent Karen Bass (whom she ass-whipped, numerically, in the “post-election” period) and give the Democratic Socialist Party strongholds in America’s two biggest cities. This has prompted accusations of corruption that are at besat unproven, which is why papers like The New York Times are leading coverage with headlines about Donald Trump’s “baseless accusations of fraud.” Meanwhile, outlets like Variety explain delays with drive-by sentences like “The state takes longer to ensure accuracy,” adding that mail-in voting “is extremely popular in the Golden State.”
The United States now has, bar none, the world’s dumbest election system. The rest of the world must look on in awe as it wonders how it is that the world’s richest and most heavily-armed country can’t count. Even if no one is cheating, it looks horrible. If America were a face, it’d sprout a golf-ball sized herpes sore every Election Day. This has been our reality since Covid and contrary to popular belief, it’s not strictly a blue-red issue, since some of our worst elections have been Democratic primaries. Every idiotic new feature is on display in California:
