The general election in the United Kingdom revealed two things: First, that the incumbent Conservative Party has lost its mandate with voters, and second, that it is possible to count millions of votes in short order.
Before the sun rose on July 5 in the U.K., the results for 648 of the 650 parliamentary constituencies had all been posted, and the newly elected members of Parliament had been certified and sent off to Westminster where they will form a new government under the leadership of new Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
While the change in government will no doubt have an impact on the “special relationship” between the United States and the U.K., the U.S. could learn a thing or two from the swiftness with which the U.K.’s election results were known.
In 2020, the results of the presidential election were infamously unknown for days after Election Day, setting the stage for a lack of confidence in the results. Two years later, in the 2022 midterms, control of the House of Representatives was not officially known until eight days after Election Day because states such as California took days to count all of the outstanding votes.
As the U.K. just showed, there is no excuse for voters to have to wait days for the final results of their elections. The capability exists for the results to be quickly counted and the results announced within hours of polls closing.
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In fact, the U.K. vote counting project is so efficient that the only reason two seats remained unconfirmed in the morning was due to close margins that required a recount that was completed by Friday evening. But in the U.S., a planned recount for the Republican primary in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District has yet to take place for an election that took place on June 18.
The U.S. can learn a thing or two from our friends across the pond. Counting votes is a pretty basic function of a democracy, and there is no excuse for why it cannot be done in a prompt manner that reinforces voter’s and candidate’s faith in the system.
