AtlantaStates that take weeks to tally their votes after Election Day have long been condemned by Republicans, including President Donald Trump. There has been a lot of activity this year to address it.
One of the primary causes of late vote counting is targeted in part by Trump’s executive order on elections, which was enacted in March but has been contested in court: Even if mailed ballots come after election day, several states still permit them to be tallied.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will take into consideration whether an Illinois challenge may move forward in one of many lawsuits supported by Republicans that aim to set an Election Day cutoff for mail-in votes.
This year, at least three states—Kentucky, North Dakota, and Utah—passed legislation requiring mailed ballots to be received by Election Day, eliminating a grace period.
A law aiming to expedite the process is making its way through the Democratic-controlled Legislature in California, where weeks-long vote counting is a common source of annoyance and a point of criticism from Republicans.
Order claims Late ballot counting is prohibited by federal law.
Trump’s extensive executive order’s ballot deadline clause is based on a reading of federal law that designates Election Day as the date of federal elections. According to him, this implies that every ballot needs to be received by that date.
According to the presidential order, it would be ridiculous to permit people to cast their ballots in person at a previous voting precinct three days after Election Day, possibly after a winner had been announced.
The president has frequently questioned the validity of these ballots despite the lack of proof linking them to massive fraud, so it follows a trend. His concerns about the length of time it takes to count ballots, his desire for results on election night, and his unfounded assertions that overnight dumps of vote tallies indicate a rigged election in 2020—when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden—are all strongly related to the problem.
In addition to being signed and dated by the voter, ballots received after Election Day also need to be mailed by the USPS to show that they were filled out and sent on or before the last day of voting.
In the past, accepting ballots that arrive late has not been a party issue. Colorado and Indiana do not permit them, whereas states as disparate as Mississippi and California do.
Steve Simon, the chief election officer in Minnesota, which has an Election Day deadline, stated that a ballot returned after Election Day is not unsecure or untrustworthy.
Trump instructs the attorney general to take all necessary steps to enforce federal law against states that include late-arriving ballots in their final tallies for federal elections in his executive order, the majority of which the courts have suspended. Additionally, he instructs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to make compliance a requirement for receiving federal funds.
Republican states are motivated by Trump’s comments.
The Voting Rights Lab, which monitors election legislation, reports that since the 2020 election, Republicans have pushed legislation in five states that moved the mail-in ballot deadline to Election Day.
The practice of accepting mail-in ballots until three days after Election Day was terminated by Republican lawmakers in Kansas earlier this year; the change will be effective for the midterm elections next year.Kansas added the grace period in 2017 as a result of mail delivery issues.
The grace period is like giving a football team more chances to score after the game clock goes off, said Republican state senator Mike Thompson of Kansas, who chairs the committee that deals with election law.
To ensure that all voters are acting within the same time limit, we need the election to conclude uniformly,” he stated.
California’s complaint history
The length of time it takes to tally votes and announce the winners has long been a source of grievances in California.
At a hearing in April, U.S. Representative Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin who chairs the Committee on House Administration, stated that the rest of the nation shouldn’t have to wait for California to announce the election results.
He said that the delays were caused by California’s “lax election laws.”
About 22.9 million people are registered to vote in the most populous state in the union, which is approximately equal to the combined number of voters in Georgia and Florida.
Additionally, California has adopted universal mail voting, which entails that each election, a ballot is automatically sent to every registered voter. Completed ballots must be postmarked by the seventh day following Election Day in order for election officials to receive them.
During the election last fall, a study of over 35,000 voters in Los Angeles County revealed that 40% of them did not return their ballots until Election Day.
Election officials claim that it is impossible to have all results accessible on election night due to the lengthy procedure of examining and tallying mail votes and the high number of voters who wait until the last minute.
Democrats in California are thinking of ways to expedite the count.
California election authorities are required by state law to count ballots, do a postelection review, and certify the results within 30 days.
Within a week of Election Day in 2024, Dean Logan, the chief election official for Los Angeles County, informed Congress in May that his team had counted almost 97% of the 3.8 million ballots cast. Before and after an election, Jesse Salinas, head of the state clerks association, stated that his employees in Yolo County, which is close to Sacramento, already put in 16-hour days seven days a week.
Legislation proposed by Assemblyman Marc Berman would compel county election officials to complete counting the majority of ballots within 13 days following the election, while maintaining the state’s 30-day certification requirement. If they were unable to fulfill that date, they would have to provide the state with notice and an explanation.
A Democrat named Berman stated, “I don’t think we can put our heads in the sand and pretend that these conspiracies aren’t out there and that this lack of confidence doesn’t exist, especially among Republican voters in California.” We can strengthen our election system by doing some good government actions.
His bill is pending Senate review, and he noted that many counties currently fulfill the 13-day limit.
“By having some of those benchmarks and just making it very clear for folks when different results will be available, I hope that this will strengthen people’s confidence in their election system and their democracy,” Berman said.
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This report was written by John Hanna of the Associated Press in Topeka, Kansas.
