The gap between when California and Florida are able to finalize their count is the natural result of election officials in the two states choosing to emphasize different concerns and set different…
Andrew Chen sorts ballots at San Francisco Department of Elections in City Hall in San Francisco on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. Nine states have at least one uncalled House race, some of which are so close they are headed to a recount.This isn’t unusual or unexpected, as the nation’s most populous state is consistently among the slowest to report all its election results. Compare it to a state like Florida, the third-largest, which finished counting its votes four days after Election Day.
California, which has long had a culture of voting absentee, started moving toward all-mail elections last decade. All-mail systems will almost always prolong the count. Mail ballots require additional verification steps — each must be opened individually, validated and processed — so they can take longer to tabulate than ballots cast in person that are then fed into a scanner at a neighborhood polling place.
Slower counts have come alongside later mail ballot deadlines. In 2015, California implemented its first postmark deadline, meaning that the state can count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day as long as the Postal Service receives the ballot by Election Day. Berman said the postmark deadline allows the state to treat the mailbox as a drop box in order to avoid punishing voters who cast their ballots properly but are affected by postal delays.
Florida’s deadlines are set to avoid having ballots arrive any later than when officials press “go” on the tabulator machines. The state has a receipt deadline for its absentee ballots, which means ballots that do not arrive by 7 p.m. local time on Election Day are not counted, regardless of when they were mailed.
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