Rep. Kevin Kiley, I-Calif., told Newsmax on Saturday that California's drawn-out ballot count is eroding public trust in elections and that he is backing federal legislation to force the state to tally votes in line with the rest of the country, as he held the lead in a crowded primary for the redrawn 6th Congressional District.

Kiley's appearance on "The Count" came as California election officials continued processing ballots from Tuesday's primary, with the secretary of state's office reporting partial precinct returns days after polls closed and certification not due until July 10.

"Yeah. It's crazy. It's not just 96 hours later," Kiley said.

"I mean, this goes on for a month in California, and you get these periodic updates every few days, and then sometimes the entire race changes.

"No other state does it like this," Kiley said.

He said "every other state, red or blue, manages to count their votes in at least a relatively timely fashion" and called the prolonged count "emblematic of the caliber of government performance that, unfortunately, our residents have had to get accustomed to."

Kiley said he has been "speaking out against this for quite a while. And it's not just me," pointing to editorial criticism of the state's pace.

The New York Times editorial board, he said, "said California needs to come out of the pre-telegraph era," and The Washington Post editorial board called the delay "a national embarrassment."

He argued that "the folks who really know this stuff are the ones who are most critical of what's going on in California."

Pressed on shifting margins as later mail ballots have favored Democrats, including in the governor's race between Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Tom Steyer for second place, and in the Los Angeles mayoral race between Spencer Pratt and Nithya Raman, Kiley acknowledged that "there are differences in terms of who votes at any given period of time."

His broader concern, he said, was "the potential that this slow counting has to erode trust in the democratic process."

"When people see, all right, we have a release on election night and one person's ahead and then, you know, they go on with their lives and learn that weeks later, suddenly another person is ahead.

"That's not how people are generally used to thinking about elections," Kiley said.

"You vote, you find out who won. We move on with our lives," he said.

He pointed to the Election Results Accountability Act as a remedy.

"Pretty much every other country in the world manages to count votes in a timely fashion," Kiley said. "So that's why we've introduced a bill called the Election Results Accountability Act that would force California to do the same."

The measure, H.R. 2694, sponsored by Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., with Kiley as an original co-sponsor, would amend the Help America Vote Act to require states to report at least 90% of federal-election ballots within 72 hours and certify within two weeks.

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