The election was over a week ago, but we’re still anxiously awaiting the results of several key races.
The winner of the tight contest for Los Angeles mayor has yet to be determined, and more than three dozen state legislative races remain undecided. As of Tuesday night, six of the nine uncalled U.S. House races were in California.
Perhaps you’re wondering why the Golden State seems to take so long to count ballots. I was, too, so I asked some election experts for their insight.
I had often heard that the delay was because California is an enormous state, with nearly 22 million registered voters. But while it’s true that we have more votes to count, we also have more election workers to help guide the process along, so volume probably isn’t the primary factor.
The experts told me that the extra time it took to finalize results in California was more likely because state officials had tried so hard to make voting here as easy as possible.
That’s a good thing, but it also means that voters have more time to turn in vote-by-mail ballots, the opportunity to correct errors in their ballots and multiple ways to cast their votes — all of which slow the final tallies. As Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Marymount University law professor, put it, “We have prized turnout over speed.”
Here are some of the reasons for the long wait:
The Rise of Mail-In Voting
In 2004, a third of California voters cast ballots by mail. In the June primary this year, that fraction had exploded to 91%, according to an analysis by the nonprofit California Voter Foundation.
The popularity of mail-in voting in the state had been growing for years when election officials decided to mail every registered voter a ballot in November 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. Now that’s standard in California for all elections.
Mail-in ballots take longer to process than those cast in person. Before a ballot can be opened and fed into a counting machine, an election worker must verify that the signature on the envelope matches the signature on file, to both confirm the identity of the voter and check that the person didn’t also fill out a ballot at a polling place.
It’s a tedious task that delays how long it takes to receive results, but it is done to make absolutely sure that the vote totals are accurate, said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.
“That’s the ironic thing,” she said. “There are some people who are observing this and thinking there must be something questionable going on, when in fact what’s going on is election officials are ensuring the security and accuracy of the vote count.”
Seven-Day Grace Period
California allows seven days for ballots to make it to election offices, as long as they’re postmarked on or before Election Day. That means that ballots that were received through Tuesday were included in the count.
Most states require that absentee ballots get to county election offices by, or even before, Election Day, with no grace period. But California officials give ballots a week to arrive to make sure no votes are disqualified because of post office delays or errors.
Ballot Curing
California counties are also required to contact voters with missing or mismatched envelope signatures so they can be given the opportunity to submit valid signatures and have their ballots counted.
This process, known as ballot curing, is mandated in only about half of U.S. states. The rest of them don’t count ballots with these problems. Curing takes time and further lengthens California’s vote-counting period.
30-Day Count Deadline
Finally, under California law, county election officials have 30 days to count every ballot. In many other states, the deadline is about a week.
“California has always had this 30-day canvass period, at least as long as I can remember,” said Paul Mitchell, a vice president at Political Data Inc., a supplier of election data based in Sacramento. But as the popularity of mail-in voting has led to more ballots coming in after Election Day, he said, “it becomes much more apparent to people that ‘Hey, it’s taking a long time.’”
On Tuesday evening, California’s secretary of state, Shirley Weber, warned that it could take several more days, or even weeks, to know all the results of last week’s elections. In 2020, it took California 11 days to report 95% of its votes.
“This is normal,” Weber said in a statement. “We have a process that by law ensures both voting rights and the integrity of elections. I would call on everyone to be patient.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .