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Comment by jrmg | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, as a Briton-turned-American, it’s always struck me as very bizarre how they start announcing results on the east coast here, while people on the west coast (not to mention Hawaii and Alaska!) are still voting. Surely it affects results?

The practice of the media predicting results based on exit polls and then everyone just treating them as if they're authoritative is equally bizarre.

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IMHO there's a lot of little and big things that feel quite bizarre about US democracy when compared to most others. A consequence of being both the first-ish and never having a government change.

That’s just a variation of the effects of mass market elections.

If you only vote for president? There’s no reason to go to the polls in the majority of states.

The problems even worse in Australia where voting is mandatory with a fine but if you’re in Western Australia you could be “forced” to vote in an already concluded election.

That's a pretty big oversimplification.

Western Australians are voting for completely different MPs and Senators to people in other states/electorates, and even if they weren't it's a small price to pay compared to having half the country not turn up on voting day.

Agreed - what would be the harm in holding counting, or at least publishing/communicating counts, until all votes have been cast?

Most media waits to make calls until polls close on the west coast.

But the incremental results: we have distributed elections. For the people reporting results the election is over.

The argument I've heard from some US-Americans supporting the practice is that it's not the same election - i.e. you aren't electing Joe Biden, you are electing members of the electoral college for state XXX.

That’s a really flimsy defence.

You’re not electing members of the electoral college though right? You’re electing who you want the electoral college members to vote for.

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