| > 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. |