America still lags behind the times in counting votes after Election Day. Speed it up.
America still lags behind the times in counting votes after Election Day. Speed it up.
Ongoing delay, in an era when one side won't accept the election results, raises doubt and adds fuel to the fire for election denialism.
Three days after the election, America has yet another reminder its process for counting ballots in races for high political office is less efficient than tallying national call-in votes for “American Idol” or automated tabulations quite common in our everyday life, such as expenses from a bank account or the number of hits on a website.
We still don’t know for sure which party will control either chamber of Congress, although indications suggests a narrow Republican majority in the House and a narrow Democratic majority in the Senate. Arizona and Nevada, in particular, are keeping us from having an official call for the Senate. A crucial gubernatorial race in Arizona, which will determine whether the Trump movement has staying power with the election of Kari Lake, is still up in the air.
There’s no immediate end in sight either. All indications are Arizona will need until “early next week” to finish its work in ballot counting, according to a top elections official in Arizona’s largest county. The process for counting the 290,000 mail-in ballots that county obtained on Election Day was expected to have started just today.
We need resolution. That’s not just because the suspense is killing us (it is), but because the ongoing process of vote counting makes American democracy seem less credible. Let’s face it, certain jurisdictions do it more quickly than others and immediate results are the norm for other mass tabulations, including financial institutions responsible for getting results accurate down to the penny.
America is supposed to a leader in the global stage in promoting democracy, not looking like it needs to take a lesson from Brazil in getting results quickly and accurately.
I wouldn’t be the first person to question why Florida, the third-largest state in the country, was able to give official results on the day of the election when states likes Arizona and Nevada with significantly smaller populations are logging so far behind they’re still not there.
I came across a great explainer article in the Arizona Mirror that responds to that very question and sets up very clearly the distinction between Florida and Arizona.
Some reasons, the analysis indicates, are simply because Florida has more restrictions in opportunities to vote by mail than Arizona. For example, Florida requires voters to drop off ballots on Election Day at no place other than a county office, the analysis says, while Arizona accepts ballots sent by mail or dropped off at a vote center.
That distinction alone leads to many more mail-in ballots for Arizona to count on Election Day, especially in the 2022 election as vote by mail becomes more popular. The 290,000 mail-in ballots Maricopa County received on Election Day is the most ever and a 70 percent increase from 2020’s general election, according to the Arizona Mirror.
But there’s also the process of voter certification. Florida counties, the analysis indicates, have in-house scanners that process the ballot envelopes. The system in Arizona is way more complicated. Ballots are sent to a separate center for scanning before they’re returned to the county for signature verification.
From the Arizona Mirror:
Election workers must pack the ballots up to be sent in their original envelopes to a separate facility in Phoenix, owned by Runbeck Election Services, to be scanned.
This transfer of ballots takes a long time. Richer tweeted that it took his team five hours, from midnight on Election Day to 5 a.m. Wednesday, to prepare the 290,000 mail-in ballot envelopes to send to Runbeck to have them scanned. The scanning process there also takes time. Votebeat reporter Jen Fifield’s ballot, dropped off at a vote center on Election Day, wasn’t scanned — indicating it was officially received — until 6:11 p.m. Wednesday, according to a text from the county’s ballot tracking system.
After scanning, Runbeck sends the ballots back to the county and signature verification can begin. Richer tweeted that the county had started verifying signatures by 7 a.m. Wednesday on the Election Day mail ballots they had received back. They come back in rounds from Runbeck, he said.
Defenders of the system in Arizona will say permitting this amount of time to process and count the ballots is the best option. After all, it provides expanded opportunities for vote by mail and ensures accuracy in counting afterward.
But I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s good enough. There’s a reasonable expectation in this day and age we should be able to have our proverbial cake and eat it too by knowing more quickly which bubbles voters filled on a ballot based on limited choices.
We’re heading into a society where the side that loses an election is going to call the results illegitimate. Dear Democrats: It’s a trend not just limited to the election deniers among Donald Trump’s followers. Just look at the consternation over George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004 or cries on the left the 2016 election was stolen from Hillary Clinton. I honestly expect both sides to continue to do that in our increasingly polarized world, despite recent lessons that should serve to chasten election deniers.
The longer the process for vote counting, the more likely it is there will be doubts in the process as suspicions are aroused on what is actually happening behind closed doors. The skepticism may be misguided, but will only add to fuel to the fire in a divided nation that doesn’t trust the other side. Find a way to speed up the process to limit the risk of that tension erupting in ugly ways.