India counted in 1 day, California still counting: Elon Musk takes jibe at US Election efficiency

By Anubhav Maurya,
ET Now (India),
November 24, 2024

Excerpt:

Elon Musk: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk praised India's election process, particularly the speed with which ballots were counted. Musk took to social networking platform X to share a message about India's Lok Sabha elections, where 640 million ballots were tallied within 24 hours.

He shared a post on X that reads, "India counted 640 million votes in a single day. California is still counting 15 million votes... 18 days later." Musk responded to this with, "Tragic."

Musk also retweeted another post with a headline praising India's efficiency and the message, "Meanwhile in India, where cheating isn't the primary goal of their election."

Musk's quick response highlighted the significant contrast between India's swift election results and California's slow vote-counting procedure for the 2024 US Presidential election. He responded to the post, "India counted 640 million votes in 1 day. California is still counting votes."

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California lags behind the rest of the country due to the sheer amount of ballots cast — more than 16 million compared to around 11 million in Texas and 8 million in New York — as well as its reliance on mail-in voting and everything it involves. This year, 73% of voters in Los Angeles County, or more than 2.7 million individuals, utilised mail-in ballots.

California's change over the previous two decades to exclusively voting by mail votes, which, despite their name, sometimes end up in drop boxes, has consistently resulted in delayed counting.

Within two days of the November 2004 election, election authorities tallied 81% of ballots cast, 67% of which were in person. According to the California Voter Foundation, by the March 2024 primary, approximately 90% of ballots in California have migrated to vote-by-mail, with just 59% being tallied within two days. (Full Story)