Why so long to count all the votes?

[18 and Life]

What things hold up the full counting of all the votes in a presidential election like the 7 million still waiting to be counted? Curious.

 

[OldLady]

A friend who did it one year said it isn't just sorting them into a pile, 1,2,3,4.... She didn't say exactly, but in our town with way less than 500 voters, it took them three hours after polls closed.

 

[longknife]

Yeah but it's been nearly a week and we don't yet have a full count.

 

[OldLady]

Yeah but it's been nearly a week and we don't yet have a full count.

I heard today that Maine is STILL trying to decide if recreational marijuana is legal. It has been announced about four times already on the radio and even in the paper, and then .... oops. Still counting. They are doing a recount because it was so close--3,000 votes, according to them. We're still using paper ballots. The initial delay was the 4,000 overseas ballots that went straight to the capital--and we know how fast THOSE folks are. Now they're recounting the pot vote. One piece of paper at a time, apparently.

 

[Little-Acorn]

Many states have mail-in ballots, that (a) take a long time to all come in, and (b) take a long time to count after they've come in.

California still has a lot to count. But in California, the easily counted ones so overwhelmingly were for one candidate, that the officials said that even if all the uncounted ones were for the other candidate, they still wouldn't change the majority count of the state, so they declared a winner before they were all counted.

But in Michigan and New Hampshire, there was no lopsided advantage, so they had to wait until all were counted before declaring a winner in the state.

 

[konradv]

What things hold up the full counting of all the votes in a presidential election like the 7 million still waiting to be counted? Curious.

There's no rush. The outstanding votes wouldn't change the outcome. The votes will be counted. They just don't have as many people on the job, because there's no urgency.