Florida is famous for botching elections. Iowa Democrats made a strong bid for that distinction in their caucuses last month. And now, for some reason, Texas is competing for the title.
If people are still in line to vote three hours after the polls are supposed to close, you're not doing things right. Texas ought to be better than this at democracy. It’s not a partisan slap, by the way: Republicans are at the top of the state’s executive branch, coordinating, regulating, helping and sometimes interfering with the election officials in the state’s 254 counties. But a lot of those local election administrators are Democrats — including in the big counties where many of this primary election’s dumpster fires blazed into the night.
Blame them all. This is operations, not ideology. The system they’re running is supposed to record and report our choices and instructions on the people who govern us. Fast, efficient, accurate, secure and convenient elections ought to be sort of boring. The news is supposed to be in the results, not in the process. That's how you build confidence in the system. Last night's bobbles and fumbles undermine it.
