WASHINGTON (AP) — A week after Election Day, control over The US House rests in just over a dozen races where the winners have yet to be determined.

Nine states have at least one unnamed House racesome of which are so close that they are headed for a recount.

Then there’s California. About half of house races yet to be decided are in the state, which only counted about three-quarters of its votes nationally.

This is not unusual or unexpected, as the nation’s most populous state is consistently among the slowest in reporting all election results. Compare that to a state like Florida, the third largest, which finished its vote count four days after Election Day.

The same was true four years ago, when Florida reported the results of nearly 99 percent of ballots cast within hours of polls closing. In California, nearly a third of the ballots were uncounted after election night, and the state was making near-daily updates on its count until Dec. 3, a full month after Election Day.

Ballots are scanned and sorted at the San Francisco Department of Elections at San Francisco City Hall, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (Scott Strazzante/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Scott Strazzante

These differences in how states matter—and how long they last—exist because the Constitution sets broad principles for electing a national government, but leaves the details up to the states. The choices state lawmakers and election officials make as they work out these details affect everything from how voters vote to how quickly results are tabulated and published, how elections are kept secure and how officials maintain voter confidence in the process. .

The difference in when California and Florida are able to complete their counts is the natural result of election officials in the two states choosing to emphasize different concerns and set different priorities. Here’s a look at the differences:

How California matters

California lawmakers designed their elections to improve accessibility and increase voter turnout. Whether they automatically receive a ballot at home, have until Election Day to turn it in, or have a few days to resolve any issues that may arise with their ballot, Californians have plenty of time and opportunity to vote. It comes at the expense of knowing the final vote shortly after the polls close.

“Our priority is to try to maximize the participation of actively registered voters,” said Democratic Rep. Marc Berman, author of the 2021 bill that permanently switched the state to mail-in elections. “What that means is that things are a little bit slower. But in a society that wants instant gratification, I think our democracy deserves to take a little time to get things right and create a system where everyone can participate.”

California, which has long had a culture of absentee voting, began moving toward mail-in elections in the past decade. Email systems will almost always extend the number. Voting by mail requires additional verification steps — each must be individually opened, validated and processed — so it can take longer to tabulate the in-person ballots, which are then fed into a scanner at a neighborhood polling station.

In 2016, California passed a bill allowing counties to participate to postal elections before temporarily instituting them nationally in 2020 and enshrining it in law in time for the 2022 elections.

Studies have found that the first states to institute mail-in elections—Oregon and Washington—saw higher voter turnout. Mail-in ballots also increase the likelihood that a voter will cast a ballot, according to Melissa Michelson, a political scientist and dean at Menlo College in California, who has written about voter mobilization.

In recent years, the thousands of California voters who drop off their mail-in ballots on Election Day have created gridlock on Election Night. In the past five general elections, California has averaged 38 percent of the vote after Election Day. Two years ago, in the 2022 midterm elections, half of the state’s votes were counted after Election Day.

Slower counts came with later mail-in voting deadlines. In 2015, California implemented its first postmark deadline, meaning the state can count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day as long as the Postal Service receives the ballot by Election Day. Berman said the postmark deadline allows the state to treat the PO box as a drop box to avoid penalizing voters who cast their ballots correctly but are affected by postal delays.

Originally, the law stated that ballots that arrived within three days of the election would be considered cast on time. This year, ballots can arrive up to a week after Election Day, so California won’t know how many ballots have been mailed until Nov. 12. That deadline means California will count ballots at least through that week, as ballots arriving by that point could still be valid and added to the count.

How Florida matters

Florida’s election system is geared toward fast and efficient tabulation. Coming out of the disastrous 2000 presidential election, when the US Supreme Court settled a recount dispute and George W. Bush was declared the state’s winner over Al Gore, the state moved to standardize its election systems and clean up canvass, or the process of confirming the votes cast and counted.

Republican Bill Posey, who as a state senator sponsored the Florida Election Reform Act of 2001, said the law’s two goals — to count all legal ballots and to ensure voters have confidence that their votes are counted – optical scanners for ballot papers in each precinct have been fulfilled by mandate. That “most significant” change means there are no more “hanging chads” in Florida. The scanners read and tally the results from the paper ballots, immediately spitting back anything that contains mistakes.

Florida’s deadlines are set to avoid ballots arriving later than when officials press “go” on the tabulator machines. The state has a deadline for receipt of ballots, meaning ballots that do not arrive by 7 p.m. local time on Election Day are not counted, regardless of when they were mailed.

Michael T. Morley, an election law professor at Florida State University College of Law, pointed out that Florida election officials can begin processing ballots, but not counting them, before the polls close. This helps speed up the process, especially compared to states that don’t allow officials to process mail-in ballots before Election Day.

“They can determine the validity of the ballots, confirm they should be counted and run them through the machines,” Morley said. “I just can’t hit the count button.”

Florida is taking steps to avoid a protracted back-and-forth with potentially problematic ballots. At the precinct, optical scanners detect some problems, such as a voter selecting too many candidates, that can be fixed on the spot. Also, any voter who returned a mail-in ballot with an incorrect or missing signature has until 5:00 p.m. two days after the election to file an affidavit establishing it. California gives voters up to four weeks after the election to address such inconsistencies.

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