Election workers process ballots for the California state primary at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on June 5. California’s relatively slow vote count put “a big target on his back,” one expert told NPR.
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Stephen Richer is no longer running for office in the nation’s fourth-largest county.
But for the rest of his life, he will remember the feeling of when the polls closed on election night.
More than a million ballots are watching him and his team. Every moment that passes without them being fully counted means another conspiracy theory springs up online.
“Those days were hell for me,” said Richer, a Republican who was Maricopa County clerk and recorder in Arizona. “You would have a limited number of workers, and you would have a limited space, and you would do everything you can. … And yet everyone is blowing up your phone, everyone is saying you’re incompetent or corrupt or worse.”
This year in the midterms, election officials in competitive congressional districts will face the same pressure.
But they will also face a harsh reality: These elections may not be called before polling day.
Here’s an FAQ explaining why and what it could mean this year.
Why do we know results immediately in some places, and in others it takes days or weeks?
It comes down to the margin of victory.
Which seems odd, since who wins an election and by how much should have no impact on how long it takes election officials to count ballots.
But the reality is that what most Americans think of as “election results” — the winners announced during election night on network television and social media — are not the result of counting all the ballots, but rather of elections called by news organizations that determine winners based on demographics and initial results from a state or district. (NPR relies on the Associated Press for its calls on the race.)
These determinations happen much more quickly when the races are not close.
“Margins matter,” said Richer, who noted that in recent elections, Utah has faced far less scrutiny than that of his home state of Arizona or some elections in California, although the states count votes at similar speeds.
“In Utah, you can overturn every election very quickly because the Republicans have high margins there,” Richer said.
This gives the illusion that the election is over, but no state has finished counting ballots by Election Night, even though it appears that way because notable races are called early.
So you’re saying that the timing of results is not at all linked to the speed of vote counting?
Not exactly.
The closer the race, the more election analysts need to know before they can make a decision. So the quicker states count ballots, the quicker these determinations can be made.
That’s why the longest wait times in each election usually come from places where races are competitive and also count slowly.
Like California?
Exactly. California has become the poster child for long results periods because of these two factors: a multitude of competitive congressional districts, which help determine the balance of power in the House of Representatives, and a vote count that has been among the slowest in the country.
Add in that President Trump, the nation’s largest purveyor of election misinformation, has long targeted liberal California, and experts see a perfect storm for false voting narratives.
“They’re a progressive party, they like mail-in ballots, they get mail-in ballots (postmarked) after Election Day,” Richer said. “It all adds up to a pretty incendiary situation.”
Charles Stewart, an elections expert at MIT, put it more simply.
“California just has a big target on its back,” Stewart said.
California’s slow vote counting sparked numerous conspiracy theories during the state’s June primary. Will this fall be a rerun?
Kim Alexander is cautiously optimistic that won’t be the case.
She leads the California Voter Foundation, which advocates for ways to speed up vote counting in California without giving up the state’s generous voting access policies, such as mailing a ballot to every active registered voter.
“We have all these incredible rights and opportunities that we give to our voters, and the price we pay is a longer vote count,” Alexander told NPR. “But that doesn’t mean it has to be that long.”
An election worker processes ballots for the California state primary at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on June 5.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The main cause of California’s slow counting comes from a phenomenon Alexander calls the “pig in the python” problem: a logjam of millions of mail-in ballots returned on Election Day that need to be processed.
Counting these ballots takes longer than in-person votes because officials must process envelopes and verify signatures to ensure mail-in ballots are cast by the people they are supposed to be cast by.
Some counties are seeing as many as 50% of their mail-in ballots delivered by Election Day, Alexander said, meaning the processing work doesn’t even begin until later in the week.
“I can’t tell you how many people are informed and engaged and … when I tell them the cause of the long vote count is voters holding on to their ballots until Election Day and turning them in, they look at me and they say, ‘That’s what I’m doing,’” Alexander said. “And I’m like, ‘I know! You’re part of the problem!'”
The state has allocated $40 million to speed up counting this year, and part of that money will go toward voter education.
Alexander is optimistic that once voters realize they can play a role in speeding up the process by voting early or using other voting methods that allow for a quicker count, they will respond.
“California has been defeated by this president for over a decade during our electoral process, and it has become quite concerning,” Alexander said. “I think California voters, if they feel like they can do something to address this, many will take action.”
To this point, research conducted earlier this year found that when voters in California’s San Joaquin County received postcards urging them to vote early, they were more likely to meet the recommended deadline allowing counting on election night.
Alexander noted one additional change that could mean less spotlight on California this year: fewer competitive districts.
Before the 2022 elections, the state had nine districts that the Cook Political Report considered competitive. But this year, in part because voters approved a mid-cycle gerrymander to address gerrymanders in Republican-controlled states, the state has only three.
That makes it less likely that the entire country will wait for California to figure out who controls the House.
OK, where should we be careful when it comes to speed of results?
Using the formula mentioned above (competitive races + slow vote counting), it’s impossible not to look at Alaska.
According to data from the MIT Election Lab, Alaska was the last state in 2024 to reach 95% of its ballots counted.
Election Day was November 5 that year, but the state’s only House race — which Republican Nicholas Begich won by fewer than 10,000 votes — was not called by the AP until November 20.
This year, polls show a close race for the Alaska Senate. That means if results fall a certain way in other states, the entire country could wait weeks to find out which party controls the U.S. Senate next year.
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