Politics

These States Are Still Counting Ballots One Week After The Midterm Elections. Here’s Why

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Arizona, California, Maine, Alaska and Colorado continue to count ballots one week past the Nov. 8 midterm elections as mail-in ballots continue to arrive at election centers.

The ballot counting process has been set back primarily due to states allowing mail-in ballots to be received after election day. California still has nine races to call across the state due to the mail-in voting system that allows ballots to be received by mail as late as Nov. 15, as long as they are postmarked by election day.

Similarly, Alaska allows ballots postmarked by election day to be received as late as Nov. 18, while overseas absentee ballots have until Nov. 23 to arrive. Colorado is also waiting for mail-in ballots with hundreds of military and overseas ballots not expected till Thursday, according to CBS News.

Again, in addition to incompetence, especially in the larger counties, California has specific laws, like the wait 7-days for mail in ballots, and the “cure your ballot” rules, that make it functionally impossible for it to ever call elections without week+ of time.

— Lex Jurgen (Bone Dry) (@Lex_Jurgen) November 15, 2022

Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Ortiz told CBS that as long as ballots are postmarked by Nov. 8, they can come in until next Thursday.

Colorado is working to address provisional ballots that have non-matching signatures, while also holding back ballots to mix into the military and provisional ballots for anonymity. Last week, Maricopa County, Arizona, reported 290,000 mail-in ballots that needed to be counted, but as of Monday, the numbers seemed to have reduced as all races have been called, according to the Associated Press.

“If you drop off an early ballot, it means it has to come in on Wednesday and start the process of being signature verified,” Maricopa County election official Bill Gates told CNN. “We have experts here who go through, compare the signature on the outside of the ballot envelope with the signature that we have in our voter registration file, so that takes a while, cause we gotta get that right.”