Why California is still counting votes and how long it may take to finish | Hacker News Reader

Why California is still counting votes and how long it may take to finish

washingtonpost.com

16 pointsdonsupreme30 comments

I'm particularly curious about this sentence:

> Signatures on mail ballots must be verified, and if they don’t match the signatures on file, county election officials are obliged to try to contact those voters to verify their signatures.

What does signature verification entail? Is it automated? I'm imagining there must be some sort of manual judgement at some point, but that seems dicey.

Automated first, then kicks out to human. Then they call if the human can't tell.

When I was a California resident, I tried voting in the first two elections that I was old enough to vote, both times I got a letter a few months later saying my vote couldn't be counted because my signature didn't match. I never bothered voting again.

you sure showed them

https://archive.is/6sX2O

I think federal elections should be run by the federal government, not the states. Dramatically increase the number of voting locations, and have the federal government manage all of that under federal rules. That would be the safest and most secure way of doing federal elections. This thing of leaving it up to states and local communities introduces to many opportunities for fraud and mismanagement. Countries the size of California seem to have no problem counting their votes in one night. Delays are not healthy for democracy and there is never enough transparency.

I guess Congress could pass a law that every state must have their votes counted within 72 hours, or votes after that will not count.

I agree with you, but I would hope they would enforce California's rules, not Florida's. California's rules are designed to make voting as accessible as possible to the greatest number of people, and to make sure every vote is properly counted.

States that finish counting in a day are throwing away and disenfranchising a lot of voters.

Having served as a poll worker in California, I've seen first-hand that there are real trade-offs in making things easy for voters vs. making the election resolve quickly.

In California, you can vote in any polling place in your county. You just have to fill out a provisional ballot if you're not in your assigned precinct, and you're limited to voting for statewide races and ballot measures. But this paperwork can slow down the line, and each provisional ballot needs to be reviewed for eligibility before being counted. Those are real costs on the back end for making voting convenient on the front end.

Sure, but that's the sacrifice we're willing to make so that everyone gets a chance to make their voice heard.

I'm not making a value judgment here. I'm just pointing out that desirable properties like "making voting easy" and "get results quickly" are often in direct tension with one another. You can't have it all, as a practical matter.

This is what I don't understand. In Spain you can only vote in your assigned precinct. Otherwise, you have to vote by mail.

Every mail vote collected by the Postal Service gets delivered on the election day to the assigned precinct. At the end of the day, all those votes are mixed in the ballot box and then counting starts. It takes no more than three hours to get the 99.5% of the votes counted nationwide.

In order to vote by mail, you have to walk into any Postal Service office with your valid government ID and explicitly ask for it. The PS agent will verify your identity and will send you the voting papers to the address you register into. Then, you do your choices and go back to any PS office and send the vote to your electoral precinct by certified mail.

From the moment you ask for mail voting, you get marked in your precinct as a mail voter, so you cannot go in person and vote anymore. You can, though, on the election day go to your precinct and verify that your vote is there.

I don't see the difficulty on this.

In Poland, you can only vote in your assigned precinct too - there's a list of eligible voters there and you show up with an ID and get ticked off the list - but you can effortlessly change it online, up until a few days before election. The change can be permanent (requires some proof of residence) or temporary, just for this single election (doesn't require anything). You can also get removed from the lists entirely and get a piece of paper that certifies your eligibility to vote instead, with which you can go vote anywhere - this way you don't even need to know where you're going to be on the election day beforehand, but if you lose it, your vote is gone, as it's your token that ensures you can only vote once.

There's also mail voting, but I never even felt the need to figure out how it works. I understand it as an accommodation for people who are disabled or otherwise ill that can't go vote in person. I always lived in cities or suburbs, so voting booth was always within a 10 minute slow walk and I've been always voting in person so far (even when away from home).

Also, in the context of US election, it's probably important to note that voting is always done on Sundays.

We usually get the official results in a day or two.

Each state in the US runs their own elections. Some states (like California) err more on the side of increased voter accessibility by offering many options to vote. This makes things convenient for voters but increases the complexity of administering election. There's no "right" or "wrong" way to do it---just different value judgments on what trade-offs are worth it.

There is no such thing as a "federal election"

Representatives and Senators are elected by the people in the states or districts they represent.

Presidents are elected by the Electoral College.

You are asking for a change in the Constitution, which takes more than Congress passing a law.

That was great when we were a loose confederation of states. That's not the case anymore. Elections to Federal office have a direct effect on everyone in the country. It's time to modernize past the 1700s.

Multiple independent systems cooperating to provide operational robustness is modern.

The Founders got this one right.

> I think federal elections should be run by the federal government, not the states.

While I happen to completely agree (I'm old enough to remember the "butterfly ballot" that resulted in George W Bush winning over Gore), your suggestion would require a constitutional amendment.

>I guess Congress could pass a law that every state must have their votes counted within 72 hours, or votes after that will not count.

Other than Delaware, literally every state would fail this standard. Delaware takes two days to certify results. The next-fastest is seven days. https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results_certification_dates...

There are many legitimate reasons why it takes time: voter accessibility (e.g., mail and overseas voting), risk-limiting audits, and making sure the paperwork is properly organized in case of recounts or legal challenges.

We get unofficial results and projected winners on election night, assuming the margin of victory is large enough. But those are just media creations. Proper legally-binding results need deliberate time and effort to get right.

How is it that California does it so much slower than other states?

There's not a single thing mentioned in the article that other states aren't doing, and 'more people ya" also means "more functionaries"

Compare it to Germany, which is twice as big and does much the same, except that voting be mail has a different deadline. Germany typically delivers the results during the night after the election, but the votes are counted again in the following week anyway, by people who work nine to five.

The big, big difference is that checking someone's identity and eligibility to vote is trivial in Germany. I venture to guess that that affects speed and perhaps reliability.

Sounds like they're doing it right to me. Let's not succumb to populist voices that complain paper ballot counting is "archaic", "expensive" and "slow". In fact, it is all three of these—plus, when done correctly, it's also "reliable", "trustworthy" and "provable", none of which can be said of online voting.

The issue is the lack of voter ID

which has historically been used to discriminate again black voters. that's why there's pushback against it even tho it may be a valid idea. in states that do have voter id, they generally make it hard to impossible to get one for marginalized people who may not have the necessary documents yet could prove they are a citizen and have a legitimate address.

To elaborate, around 21 million eligible voters in the US do not have an ID that would be acceptable under current and proposed voter ID laws.

In some states the necessary ID is free, but "free" just means that there is no fee for the ID or to apply for it. It does not mean that getting copies of the necessary documents that must be submitted with the application are free. Those can sometimes run to over $100.

Here's a collection of links I've saved over the years on this:

https://www.projectvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/AMERI...

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2012/jul/11/eric-holde...

https://www.aclu.org/documents/oppose-voter-id-legislation-f...

https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/2018/Minority_Voting_Access...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a...

https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/4/7157037/us-voter-id-req...

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/07/644648955/for-older-voters-ge...

https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2014/10/16/well-actually-pretty-...

https://www.theregreview.org/2019/01/08/shapiro-moran-burden...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/heres-h...

https://scholars.org/contribution/high-cost-free-photo-voter...

https://now.tufts.edu/2018/01/23/proving-voter-id-laws-discr...

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/debu...

How do they live without ID? You need ID to open a bank account, cash checks, collect benefits, get a job...

6% of Americans don't have bank accounts. That rises to 23% of people who make less than $25k/year. See [1].

For cashing checks without an ID one way you could do it is via a third-party endorsement. Write on the back "Pay to the order of <trusted friend who does have ID>" and that trusted friend cashes it for for them and gives them the money.

My guess for getting a job is that (1) many of those without ID don't have jobs (e.g., members of a single income household who are not the income earner) or (2) have jobs that pay in cash and aren't on the record.

There might also be people who had ID but no longer do. I'm old enough that next year I start on Medicare, and next year or the year after I'll start collecting Social Security. Suppose in a few years I'm no longer able to drive and let my driver's license expire.

It's actually been a long time since I needed to show anyone my driver's license.

I do all my banking online. I do all my check cashing online (my bank has an excellent "deposit check by taking a photo" in their app). I could also deposit checks at the ATM. I expect I'll do all my interaction with the Social Security system and the Medicare system online. I expect to get a Medicare Advantage plan with Kaiser (my current health provider), which if they handle people on their Medicare Advantage plans the same way they handle people on their non-Medicare plans just requires that I have my Kaiser card. (Actually, they don't seem to actually even require the card--just that the patient knows their account number).

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/02/23percent-of-low-income-amer...

Most countries require it.

It's as American as customary units

The article lists the reasons it takes long to count. Which do you think have anything to do with voter ID.

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