I mean, BRAZIL had results nationally in a day. Major states like Florida were mostly done before midnight.
I "get" that Arizona had problems with their machines, but gimme a break.
Why does it take an hour for some whole states - and days, even a week - for some major cities?
Please, no snarky comments. I do suspect some of them might be true - if you're going to fix an election, you can't hide your tracks so easily if you do it all upfront. But assuming that anyway - why does it take so long?
Is it all the damned DIFFERENT kinds of ballots, verifying DIFFERENT kinds of rules? I've heard in PA, there's different methods in just about every district.
Even here in Maryland, it was over pretty quick, and they offered me two ways to vote when I went in.
What makes it so much worse than it was, when I was a kid?
The short answers to why it seems to take longer and in some cases does take longer:
(1) There's a lot more drop-off and mail-in voting than there used to be. Generally speaking, there's more involved in counting such (individual) votes than there is in counting election day in-person votes. Further, there is far more free labor available to help count election day in-person votes than there is available to help count early drop-off and mail-in votes. (The voters themselves do a lot of the work when it comes to counting election day in-person votes.)
(2) I think we are more aware of more races - e.g., races from other states or for less significant seats - than we used to be. So we notice that some races take a long time to get called. When we're only paying attention to a few races, there are fewer opportunities for those races to be close enough to take a long time to get called. It's always taken a long time for ALL the votes to get counted. But in the past we didn't notice that as much because most of the races we paid attention to were called early on, even though all the votes hadn't been counted. The races that don't get called because they're too close stand out.
The short answers to why there seems to be such a difference or is such a difference between how long it takes to count votes in different places:
(1) Different places have different rules regarding the process of counting drop-off, mail-in, and early votes. In particular, they have different rules about when that counting (and processing more generally) can begin. In some states, e.g. Colorado and Florida, mail-in votes can be processed and counted long before election day. In other states, e.g. Michigan and Pennsylvania, mail-in votes can't even be processed until election day. So in some states it takes far longer to count (and report) mail-in votes. (That's exacerbated by what I mentioned earlier - the lack of help from the voters themselves when it comes to processing such votes.)
In 2020 the effects of these different rules was quite apparent. In Florida, e.g., the first reported vote totals showed President Biden with a huge lead. But it was still apparent that President Trump was going to win the state, and by a sizable margin, because the huge block of votes that were initially reported - and which favored President Biden - were the early and/or mail-in votes which surely skewed heavily in his favor. As time went on the election day in-person votes would get reported and they'd skew heavily in favor of President Trump, and by enough to easily overcome the early votes. In contrast in Michigan, e.g., the early vote totals showed President Trump with a lead. But it was still apparent, at least to me, that President Biden was likely going to win the state. That's because the opposite was happening. The first votes reported were election day in-person votes which skewed heavily in President Trump's favor and the votes reported later were largely early votes which skewed heavily in President Biden's favor.
(2) How much mail-in and early voting happens no doubt varies significantly between states.
(3) Again, some races aren't close and can be called quite early even though all the votes haven't been counted. We don't notice it taking a while to count all the votes in those races because they've already been called. Other races are much closer, either as reported or in effect. (By 'in effect', I mean not all 0.5% leads are the same. When we take into account where the remaining uncounted votes are, and what kind of votes they are, a 0.5% lead can mean a race is extremely close or it can mean that the winner is already clear.)
You mentioned Florida. They aren't done counting votes in Florida. (They are, though, significantly ahead in counting votes as compared to many other places, in part because of what I pointed out in (1) above.) But the big races that we were likely to be paying attention to weren't close and could be called early. So we tend not to notice that the vote counting isn't finished there. In Nevada and Arizona, e.g., the Senate races are closer - Nevada is especially close (again, taking into account what votes remain uncounted). So those races haven't been called yet and thus we notice that the vote counting continues.
As for Brazil, I don't know what their vote counting rules are and how prevalent mail-in and early voting is there. And how close was the last election took note of?
I will say this, I don't know why Nevada in particular isn't further along in its vote counting. Both Nevada and Arizona allow early processing and counting of mail-in votes. I've seen it reported that, for whatever reason, a huge number of votes were dropped off on election day in Maricopa county (something like a quarter of the total number of votes cast there). That would explain why Arizona still has a lot of votes to count. But what about Nevada? Did something similar happen there?
Lastly, I'd say I'm a little surprised Arizona hasn't been called. With his current lead, and given where the remaining votes are coming from, it seems pretty clear that Mr. Kelly has won that race. Nevada on the other hand is very, very close.
EDIT: I meant to add, since you mentioned Maryland, that Maryland isn't even close to finished counting votes. It appears to have more votes remaining uncounted, on a percentage basis, than Nevada and about the same as Arizona. But the races we might have been paying attention to weren't particularly close and could be called early, so - it seems - we don't notice that it's taking a while to count the votes here.
EDIT: I'm seeing differing reports for the number of votes still uncounted in Maryland. It may be considerably less than in Nevada and Arizona, but it's still a lot of votes - 100k+.
