[dragonwriter]

> Why do the estimated vote counts keep going up?

The same reason they are estimated counts in the first place, there's not hard counts of ballots before the, um, count of ballots.

> Why has this process dragged on for days.

Because its a manual process that normally takes days.

> Where do they keep losing ballots?

They don't, that's why the estimated numbers go up, not down.

> Why isn't there a deadline?

There is, both in federal and, usually sooner, in state law.

> Why are only these states still counting?

Only those states are still getting national attention, many states are still counting but once the result of the races of national interest were clear, no one outside of people interested in state races that might still be in doubt was paying attention.

[tathougies]

So I understand all this but I'm wondering if you can explain to me how I as a lay person am expected to differentiate your supposed chain of events from what the news tells me are tell tale signs of voter fraud.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190

[tathougies]

In my home state of Oregon, ballot results are released pretty much immediately, because the ballot deadline for receipt is 8 pm on election day. The same was true of California when I lived there. Why are the rules suddenly changed? Did no one foresee that this would cause one of the worst elections in American history?

[dragonwriter]

> In my home state of Oregon, ballot results are released pretty much immediately, because the ballot deadline for receipt is 8 pm on election day.

Oregon is still counting, with a little under 90% of ballots counted by the latest numbers I can find.

> The same was true of California when I lived there.

It hasn't been in the 40+ years I've lived here, so I don't know what you're on about. Yes, since California did a quick flip between being a Republican lock and a Democratic lock in Presidential elections, you usually have a projected Presidential winner immediately. But the actual vote count usually takes quite a few days.

That's just California being noncompetitive in Presidential elections, not especially fast at vote counting.

> Why are the rules suddenly changed?

To the extent rules were changed for this election, it was because of a major public health emergency that raised concerns about the danger to both individual voters and the wider community from the usual level of in-person voting in places that don't already have predominantly mail-in elections.

> Did no one foresee that this would cause one of the worst elections in American history?

Nothing about the actual election itself, other than the abuse of the Postal Service in an attempt to prevent delivery of lawful votes, has been particularly bad. Yes, the fact that results are close in a number of states means that there isn't a projected electoral college winner yet. That's not a big deal.

[hsk]

Rules are decided by each state on its own. You can blame the constitution for deferring election procedures to each state.

In PA, for example, the legislature (which is GOP I might add) forbid counting mail-in ballots until election day. That basically guarantees delays.

Have you been around for Gore vs Bush? I'm not sure why you're claiming this is one of the worst elections. Most close elections aren't called on election day. Almost every state continues counting past election day. It's just you're only hearing about the ones that are close.

[noahtallen]

Why is it causing one of the worst elections in American history? I’ve heard that the votes received after the day, but postmarked on time, only number in the hundreds. If that’s true, they may not be consequential. States are still processing ballots which were received on time, like you say. So that’s not even a factor in why it’s taking so long yet.

The difference between PA and OR is that PA could not begin processing its mail-in ballots earlier than Election Day. Additionally, Oregon has had decades to perfect its mail-in system. Other states are processing the most mail-in ballots they’ve ever gotten, so we should expect that it won’t be very fast or smooth yet.

Additionally, if CA was a swing state, we’d be in the same position here. It’s still counting ballots and still releasing updates. It just doesn’t have a razor thin margin like the rest of the states, so it was projected to go blue very early.

What we’re seeing is expected given how tight the races are in each state, as well as how many more people voted by mail this year!

[rsynnott]

> Did no one foresee that this would cause one of the worst elections in American history?

Did you sleep through 2000?

This really isn't anything all _that_ unusual; the previous one was over quickly because the electoral college happened to fall that way (though the count went on for ages afterwards, and IIRC it took a day or so for the popular vote to flip), and the two before that weren't close enough for it to be an issue. It's still by any reasonable measure a lot less of a fiasco than 2000; it's pretty unlikely to rest on a couple of hundred votes or anything like that.

[pwinnski]

Many of these rules haven't changed at all, but there's a pandemic happening, so many, many, many more people have taken advantage of mail ballots than in years past.

Additionally, there were some lawsuits to prevent states from counting received ballots before Election Day, so some of this "confusion" is the direct result of efforts by the people filing those lawsuits to create it.

[striking]

California is still counting its votes too. It's just not a close enough race for us to have to wait to find out what the results are.

[stickfigure]

Election laws are set by states, and they're all different.