WASHINGTON (AP) — Florida reported results in the 2020 presidential election just hours after polls closed with more than 99% of votes cast.

In California, nearly a third of the votes remained uncounted after election night. The state was providing almost daily count updates until Dec. 3, a full month after Election Day.

This was not unusual or unexpected.

California, the nation’s most populous state, consistently ranks among the slowest to report election results. Florida, the third most populous state, is often among the first to finish.

The Constitution lays out broad principles for electing a national government and leaves the details to the states. The choices state lawmakers and election officials make as they sort out these details affect everything from how voters vote, to how quickly results are tallied and announced, to how elections are kept secure and how officials maintain voters’ confidence in the process. .

The difference between when California and Florida can complete their counts is the natural result of election officials in the two states choosing to highlight different concerns and set different priorities.

How does California count?

Lawmakers in California designed their elections to increase accessibility and increase participation. Californians have plenty of time and opportunity to vote, whether it’s automatic pickup of the ballot at home, having until Election Day for the ballot to be delivered, or having several days to resolve any issues that may arise with the ballot. This comes at the expense of knowing the final vote counts immediately after the polls close.

“Our priority is to try to maximize the participation of actively registered voters,” said Democratic Assemblyman Marc Berman, who wrote the 2021 bill that permanently switches the state to mail-in elections. “This means things are a little slower. “But in a society that wants instant gratification, I think it’s worth our democracy taking some time to fix that and create a system where everyone can participate.”

California, which has long had a culture of absentee voting, began moving toward all-mail elections in the last decade. All postal systems will almost always extend the count. postal votes require additional verification The steps (each must be opened, verified and processed separately) so they can take longer to tabulate than in-person votes, which are then sent to a scanner at the neighborhood polling place.

In 2016 California passed a bill allowing counties to participate Switching to all-mail elections before being temporarily implemented statewide in 2020 and signed into law in time for the 2022 elections.

Studies show that the first states to introduce mail-in elections (Oregon and Washington) higher participation. Voting by mail also increases the likelihood that a voter will vote in full, according to Melissa Michelson, a political scientist and dean at Menlo College in California who writes on voter mobilization.

In recent years, thousands of California voters dropping off their ballots by mail on Election Day created a bottleneck on election night. Over the past five general elections, California has tallied an average of 38% of its votes after Election Day. Two years ago, half of the state’s votes in the 2022 midterm elections were counted after Election Day.

The slower counts came with later mail-in voting deadlines. In 2015, California implemented its first postmark deadline; This means the state can count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, as long as the Postal Service receives the ballots by Election Day. Berman said the postmark deadline allows the state to treat the drop box as a drop box to avoid penalizing voters who cast their ballots properly but were affected by mail delays.

Initially, the law provided that incoming ballot papers in three days The election will be deemed to have been made on time. This year, ballots may arrive up to a week after Election Day, so California won’t know how many ballots have been cast until November 12. This deadline means California will be counting ballots for at least that week, as ballots are due to arrive by November 12. This point may still be valid and added to the count.

How does Florida count?

Florida’s election system is geared towards tabulating quickly and efficiently. After the disastrous 2000 presidential election, when the U.S. Supreme Court resolved the recount dispute and George W. Bush was declared the winner over Al Gore in the state, the state moved to standardize its election systems and clean up its image; The process of certifying votes cast and counted.

Republican Rep. Bill Posey, who sponsored the Florida Election Reform Act of 2001 as a state senator, said the bill achieved its two goals by requiring all legal votes to be counted and to ensure that voters have confidence that their votes were counted. There are optical ballot scanners in every precinct. This “most significant” change means there will be no more “hanging fools” in Florida. Scanners read and tally the results of paper ballots and immediately reject those containing errors.

Florida’s deadlines were set to prevent ballots from arriving later than officials could press “go” on tabulation machines. The state has a deadline for absentee ballots; This means that ballots that do not arrive by 7pm local time on Election Day are not counted, regardless of when they were mailed.

Michael T. Morley, an election law professor at Florida State University College of Law, noted that Florida election officials may begin processing ballots before the polls close, but will not actually count them. This helps speed up the process, especially when compared to: Don’t let officials process mail ballots Before Election Day.

“They can determine the validity of the ballots, verify that they need to be counted, and run them through the machines,” Morley said. “They can’t press the vacation button.”

Florida is taking steps to avoid protracted back-and-forth on potentially problematic ballots. Optical scanners in the area detect some problems that can be solved on the spot, such as voters choosing too many candidates. Additionally, any voter who returns a mail-in ballot with a mismatched or missing signature must file a corrective affidavit by 5 p.m. two days after the election. California gives voters up to four weeks after the election to resolve such discrepancies.

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