OPINION:

On Wednesday morning, Republicans were celebrating runoff wins in California, where it appeared Steve Hilton would advance to the state’s general election for governor and reality-TV star Spencer Pratt would face off with incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

Still, only 57% of the Golden State’s votes had been counted. At this writing, a day later, the number dropped to 56% tallied.

We will not know the official election results until 37 days after the Tuesday primary, as that is the legal window California’s secretary of state has to officially certify statewide results. Already, Polymarket has Mr. Pratt dropping to third place in the Los Angeles mayoral odds, trailing Ms. Bass and democratic socialist Nithya Raman.

California, arguably, has the most asinine election system in the nation.

After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Golden State endeavored to make voting easier by mailing ballots to every registered voter. Those ballots are valid as long as they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive at county election offices within seven days after the election.

This allowance is ripe for mischief.

Earlier this week, a lawsuit was filed against California’s secretary of state, alleging that 873,092 inactive voter registrations (meaning people who either moved out of the state or died) were still on the rolls, resulting in ballots being mailed to their old residences.

Under federal law, inactive voter registrations must be removed after two general federal elections. Instead, more than 800,000 registrations have remained inactive on the rolls for at least three elections, with 151,202 on the rolls after at least four consecutive elections, the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit also argues that California has taken no effective action to require its counties to resolve the issue, citing admissions by California officials. Mailing more ballots than eligible voters in the state could easily lead to dirty elections, as recipients of those ballots could have not one, but two (or three!) votes.

California has also legalized ballot harvesting, which means a third party can collect ballots and deliver them to election officials, eliminating the ballot protection that allows only a family member to return another voter’s ballot. Ballots can be harvested and counted 30 days after the election.

After the 2018 election, when ballot harvesting was legalized, Democrats flipped seven Republican-held congressional seats in the state. These races were uber-close on Election Day but widened after late-arriving ballots were counted.

Paid collection is also allowed, so long as compensation is not on a per-ballot basis. This also gets murky. In May, a California woman was federally charged with paying individuals, including homeless people on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, to register to vote.

The woman, Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, worked for about 20 years as a “petition circulator,” paid by individuals and entities known as “coordinators” to collect voter signatures on official petitions, referendums and recalls for California state ballots. She drove around L.A. to find registered voters to sign the petitions, but apparently that was not enough.

The Department of Justice charged Ms. Armstrong in 2025 with offering payments to people not only to sign her petitions but also to complete a voter registration form, which is illegal.

Then there are the state’s thousands of ballot drop boxes. Two election vandalism incidents are under investigation in Los Angeles County, where county election workers found burned ballots inside one drop box on Sunday.

That same day, a Bay Area voter showed up at a closed ballot center only to discover its doors unlocked and the building unsecured.

California also does not require a valid ID to cast a ballot and has been flooded with illegal aliens as a sanctuary state, leading to all sorts of confusion and potential shenanigans.

Forcing California to clean up its election system has been a long slog, but one that the Trump administration has been fighting to change. Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, is actively pursuing election integrity cases within the state.

The Republican National Committee has a case before the Supreme Court claiming Election Day should be just that: one day. It argues that mail-in ballots counted after Election Day should be disqualified.

Then there is the SAVE America Act, which is lingering in the Senate. It would ensure that California cleans up its voter rolls and requires voters to show ID.

California needs to do better. If Messrs. Hilton and Pratt fail to advance to the general election, any massive distrust in the state’s election system will be entirely justified — even without well-documented, certifiable fraud.

• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.