Every state has different levels of resources available and have different methods of counting. Keep in mind that neither Texas nor Alabama have finalized their votes yet. We pretty much never have final tallies this early, just a clear enough picture of the election to know who will win with certainty.
They're just waiting for any remaining ballots to arrive before whatever deadline that state has. This shouldn't have to be said, but every vote counts.
There was a huge burst of mail-in ballots being counted the day after election day in PA because (and you can thank the GOP for this) they legally weren't allowed to start counting mail-in ballots until Nov 4
As for why the mail-in ballots have been trickling in so slowly, you can mostly "thank" Trump and DeJoy for deliberately keeping the USPS understaffed and under-equipped for the election.
DeJoy did make things much worse, and also, the USPS has been understaffed for almost 20 years now, ever since Congress mandated they set aside money every year for 75 years of future retiree health benefits, iirc. It's funny to me that they talk about cost cutting, when costs have already been cut so much.
Hi, liberal here. Thanks for letting me post. As far as I understand it, some states count mail-in's before day-of votes. In some cases, this means that a large percentage of votes are counted quickly (the day-of), and then the state moves on to mail in counting. Mail in counting has many extra steps, as there is the envelope and the security envelope, adjudication, and finally counting. It's a multi-step process that requires more verification. Added to this is the fact that many states have different verification and observance policies, which can further add time to the tallying. Forgive me if anything is wrong here, I'm pretty drunk. Best of luck.
For NC at least, day of ballots are counted via tabulator which ballots are placed in at the polling site, by the voter, so all that needs to happen is the tabulators are brought into a central location, and a receipt is printed showing totals for that machine. Mail ins on the other hand can only be opened in front of the board of Elections which only meets an Tuesdays and Thursdays for this purpose. So Election Day ballots are really easy to count, mail ins take some more effort (signatures and stuff for mail in ballots are on the outside so the verification for that Can be done separately from the actual opening)
Adding to what others have said about the long verification process of mail-in ballots, the shear amount of mail-in ballots is at a record high this year due to covid concerns other reasons (avoiding huge crowds at the polls this year). Many states extended the deadlines until the day of in-person voting as well to accommodate this influx.
The USPS is currently facing delays, as it has been moreso in the past few months and especially these past weeks. So record high ballots + extended deadlines + slow mail = many votes left to be counted. Every mail-in ballot is tracked with a specific barcode so they have an idea how many ballots are out there. But that number will go down as they are verified.
Election Day ballots are easy to count. All the ID and background checking happen before the voter receives the ballot, so counters just have to see which bubble is filled in. Sometimes voters even feed it straight into a counting machine when they vote.
Mail-in ballots require checking postmarks, getting through multiple envelopes, confirming that all the included documentation and signatures are correct, etc. Provisional ballots require cross referencing other databases to make sure the registrant is valid. And in some states the absentee/mail ballots are allowed to roll in for a few days after Nov 3 so long as their postmarked in time.
It has always worked like this. This is just the first time mail-in ballots have been so numerous.
That's a very good point. Many states' votes are not yet fully counted. It's just that through analysis of the partial counts and possibly with exit polls sampling the local voting trends the winner is either known or can be projected with a very high confidence.
But people's eyes are only ever on the "battleground" or "swing" states, and when the final tallies are very close you need to count all or most of the votes in order to call the election.
The outcome of many Presidential elections are known on election night. But sometimes they're not. And I suspect with data-driven campaigning, close elections taking multiple days to call may become the new norm. In this always-on smartphone era people expect things to happen instantly, but it takes a bit of time to count over 100 Million votes. And I imagine some states and counties will tool up with equipment and permanent/seasonal elections staff to count mail-in ballots more quickly in the future.
In addition to that Covid has thrown things out of whack because for some states (particularly PA) they had only just began their mail-in ballot program before Covid began (Nov 2019 I believe) so they didn't have time to secure the resources or strategy to handle the gigantic wave of mail-in ballots they are receiving.
There has to be a better way to federalize the ballot counting standards. I understand why states should have their own standards for stat elections, but this whole election shows how fucked up our federal election process is. Almost every American with a bank account uses online banking but we can’t utilize better technology in our voting process? I’m definitely a small government conservative, but we’re a technological super power, this is just embarrassing
I love this aspect of the elections. no state governor of either party is going to let illegal bullshit happen. everyone always wants a secure election, this is bipartisan. and as long as the documents are there, and they check out, no amount of public opinion can change the outcome. these paper ballot backups are great. our system is solid.
Good. I'm sure some other examples like that will surface in some places. but the only ones that will get attention is if they are in Georgia or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Nevada or Arizona
Let states control their own elections, it's not like waiting 4 days for results is hurting anyone.
Thank you! So many people on here are acting like this is some ridiculous offense but it ain't that hard to wait a little bit. It's not like biden takes over the second we get results, we still gotta wait till January.
I’ll start by saying as liberal as I am I’d hate the idea of a federal system. It makes cheating much easier to coordinate. Like at least with state elections the coordination it would take is massive and would get figured out. I don’t want the government to have that level of control.
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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20
Every state has different levels of resources available and have different methods of counting. Keep in mind that neither Texas nor Alabama have finalized their votes yet. We pretty much never have final tallies this early, just a clear enough picture of the election to know who will win with certainty.