Somewhat tangentially, California really needs to improve its ballot counting system. Sure, it’s a big State, but so are Florida and Illinois, and we both get almost all the votes counted by the next morning. The UK and Japan are both bigger than California and generally have votes counted by the next morning. California has a lot of mail votes, but there are States that do ALL their voting by mail and still get them counted within a couple days of the election. The only explanation I can think of for this is that California simply doesn’t hire enough ballot counters.
There are good reasons to expect California to one of the slower States to complete its vote count, but there’s no excuse for it being as much of an outlier as it is. It shouldn’t matter in the end, but in a political climate where bad actors are constantly spinning conspiracy theories about rigged votes, it’s a bad look to have the vote counting mysteriously take much longer than it should. Seems like it would be very much in the interest of California Democrats to spend the money to get the votes counted in a reasonable amount of time.
Despite what DeSantis’ tweet suggests, there is not a single state – Florida included – that counts every vote on election night. Where there are large enough margins between the winning and losing candidates, the media can project the winners in races even if final certification can still take days and even weeks. In 15 states and D.C., completed mail ballots must be postmarked by Election Day but can continue to be received after. In other states, such as Pennsylvania, mail ballots must be received by Election Day in order to be counted. States also accept ballots through the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) if they are postmarked on or by Election Day. For these types of ballots, election workers need additional time after Election Day – and counting these ballots can often make the difference between winning and losing in closely-watched states…
For all these reasons, Governor DeSantis’ tweet is misleading – and a reminder of how easily misinformation about reported results can be exploited to discredit our free and fair elections. Not knowing the winner on election night says nothing about the integrity of our elections or the accuracy of the results. In fact, it tells us our robust system of checks and balances is working – just as it should be.
Florida actually counts 99% of its ballots on election night, which is why I said “almost all” instead of “all”. Did you have any actual point to make, or did you just want to post an irrelevant link that doesn’t even mention California?
It needs to…why? The only reason to speed things up that I ever see provided is because “people will incorrectly say the time is indicative of or leads to fraud.” Of course, the people raising this issue don’t believe it themselves, no siree. They’re just amplifying the message for reasons. For example…
“Mysteriously?” The reasons have been spelled out multiple times, but you choose to again raise the specter of something nefarious.
Our time would be better spent educating people about the importance of getting the count right and ensuring that no one is disenfranchised in the process, rather than amplifying baseless conspiracy theories.
Is California one of the States that doesn’t start processing and counting mail-in votes until Election Day? If so, just getting rid of that rule might produce dramatic improvement.
So again: is your claim that other States frequently get vote counts wrong and put the losing candidate into office? Or that there are significant groups of people who can vote in California who would be disenfranchised by policies that most other States have? In either case, cites would be appreciated.
Another suggestion that works well in other States: Don’t count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. They used to do it that way before 2012, and at that time about 0.5% of ballots were rejected for lateness. Now, they give people a whole extra week…and 0.5% of the ballots are still rejected for lateness.
I think that’s a pretty good reason, but another one is that it’s just plain embarrassing for a State, and by extension for the Party that controls that State, to be so much worse than any other State at performing a basic function of democratic government.
California is unique in that so many mail-in votes come on the last day and for the week after. This does not happen to this extent in other mail-only states like OR and WA. Much of that is due to CA’s jungle primary. This has been mentioned repeatedly in this thread.
As for a cite that other states disenfranchise voters, here’s one:
Florida really doesn’t have room to criticize other states for slow ballot-counting. Some of still remember 2000, when they were so slow that the Supreme Court had to order a finish for them (that just coincidentally happened to favor the brother of the then-governor).
What “problem” are you trying to fix? If we were the somehow the fastest, Trump et al would say we were inaccurate because of that. People love to bash California and they will regardless. Changing things because of how we are perceived? Really?
Well, if you don’t want to hear it from me, how about from Governor Newsom?
“We must acknowledge that the longer the voting count takes, the more mis- and disinformation spread. That means we must do all that we can to tabulate votes quickly and accurately. Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold.”
The issue with solving a a problem that doesn’t exist is that you legitimize it as a problem. And now that can be used to force other changes. Anything that might take longer to count can be ruled against once you set that precedent.