\nThose determinations come a lot faster when races aren’t close.\n<\/p>\n
\n“Margins matter,” said Richer, who noted that in recent elections, there has been a lot less scrutiny on Utah than there has been on his home state of Arizona, or certain contests in California, despite the states counting votes at similar speeds.\n<\/p>\n
\n“In Utah you can call all the races very quickly because the Republicans there have high margins,” Richer said.\n<\/p>\n
\nThat gives the illusion of elections there being complete, but no state is done counting ballots on election night, even if it seems that way because notable races are called early.\n<\/p>\n
So you’re saying the timing of results isn’t at all tied to vote-counting speed?<\/p>\n
\nNot exactly.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe closer the race, the more election analysts need to see before they can make a call. So the faster states count ballots, the faster those determinations can be made.\n<\/p>\n
\nThis is why the longest wait times every election usually come from places that have competitive races and which also count slowly.\n<\/p>\n
Like, California?<\/p>\n
\nExactly. California has become the poster child for long results times because of both those factors: a bevy of competitive congressional districts, which help determine the balance of power in the U.S. House, and a vote count that’s been among the slowest in the nation.\n<\/p>\n
\nAdd in that President Trump, the most prominent purveyor of election misinformation in the country, has long targeted the liberal California, and experts see a perfect storm for false voting narratives.\n<\/p>\n
\n“It’s progressive, it likes mail ballots, it gets [postmarked] mail ballots after Election Day<\/a>,” Richer said. “It just all adds up to a fairly incendiary situation.”\n<\/p>\n \nCharles Stewart, an elections expert at MIT, put it more simply.\n<\/p>\n \n“California just has a big target on its back,” said Stewart.\n<\/p>\n California’s slow vote counting caused a lot of conspiracy theorizing<\/a> during the state’s June primary. Is this fall going to be a rerun?<\/p>\n \nKim Alexander is cautiously optimistic that won’t be the case.\n<\/p>\n \nShe runs the California Voter Foundation, which has been advocating for ways<\/a> to speed up California’s vote tally without giving up the state’s generous<\/a> voting access policies, like mailing every active registered voter a ballot.\n<\/p>\n \n“We have all these amazing rights and opportunities that we give to our voters, and the price we’re paying is a longer vote count,” Alexander told NPR. “But that doesn’t mean that it has to be this long.”\n<\/p>\n An election worker processes ballots for the California state primary at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on June 5.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Justin Sullivan<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n Getty Images<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n The single biggest cause for California’s slow count comes from a phenomenon Alexander calls “the pig in the python” problem: a logjam of millions of vote-by-mail ballots getting returned on Election Day that need to be processed.\n<\/p>\n \nThose ballots take longer to count than in-person votes, as officials need to deal with envelopes and verify signatures to make sure mail ballots are cast by the people they’re supposed to be cast by.\n<\/p>\n \nSome counties see up to 50% of their vote-by-mail ballots turned in on Election Day, Alexander said, which means processing work doesn’t even begin until later in the week.\n<\/p>\n \n“I can’t tell you how many people who are informed and engaged and \u2026 when I tell them that the cause for the long vote count is voters holding on to their ballots to Election Day and turning them in, they look at me and they’re like, ‘That’s what I do,'” Alexander said. “And I’m like, ‘I know! You’re part of the problem!'”\n<\/p>\n \nThe state allocated $40 million<\/a> to speeding up its counting this year, and part of that money is going to voter education.\n<\/p>\n \nAlexander is optimistic that once voters learn they can play a role in speeding up the process by voting earlier, or by utilizing other voting methods<\/a> that allow for quicker counting, they will respond.\n<\/p>\n \n“California has been beaten up by this president for over a decade over our election process, and it’s gotten pretty worrisome,” Alexander said. “I think that California voters, if they feel they can do something to respond to that, many will take action.”\n<\/p>\n \nTo that point, research conducted<\/a> earlier this year found that when voters in California’s San Joaquin County received postcards urging them to vote earlier, they were more likely to meet the recommended deadline that allowed for election-night counting.\n<\/p>\n \nAlexander noted one more change that could mean less spotlight on California this year: fewer competitive House districts.\n<\/p>\n \nAhead of the 2022 elections, the state had nine districts that the Cook Political Report<\/a> considered competitive. But this year, in part because voters approved a mid-cycle gerrymander to respond to gerrymanders in Republican-controlled states, the state has just three<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \nThat makes it less likely the entire country will be waiting on California to know who controls the House.\n<\/p>\n OK, anywhere else we should be watching when it comes to results speed?<\/p>\n \nUsing the formula discussed earlier (competitive races + slow vote counting), it’s impossible not to look at Alaska.\n<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792442173_265_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n