In 2020 Florida had published three quarters of its votes within half an hour of its polls closing. Pennsylvania needed four days to know who had won. In 2022 California was still counting a month after the election. Same country, same kind of paper ballot.
The rules behind those numbers were still in force for the midterm elections of November 2026. And the gap has a cost: every time a count runs on for days, part of the country watches the numbers jump overnight and concludes that something is being stolen.
What lets one state publish most of its votes in half an hour, while another needs a month?
On election night in 2020, at about three in the morning, the city of Milwaukee reported 169,583 votes at once. On a results chart that looks like a wall appearing out of nowhere.
But Milwaukee's election officials had said, weeks before, that this is exactly when it would happen. At 8 p.m. on election day they repeated it: all the mail ballots counted at the city's central facility would be reported together, sometime between three and six in the morning. The jump arrived on schedule, and fact-checkers found ballots being counted, not ballots appearing from nowhere. In other states and other years, late batches like this have favoured either side.
So why did Milwaukee's batch take until three in the morning? Were the officials simply slow?
Under Wisconsin law they could not start counting those mail ballots until the morning of election day. Every envelope had to be opened, checked, flattened and scanned in a single day and night.
That is also why Pennsylvania needed four days. In 2019 a law passed with support from both parties let every voter in the state vote by mail for the first time. The same law said counties may not begin preparing a single mail ballot before 7 a.m. on election day. A year later 2.6 million people voted by mail, more than a third of everyone who voted — far more than the people who wrote the law had expected.
Most states don't work this way. As of 2026, 44 of them let officials begin processing mail ballots before election day. Six do not, and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are two of them. County officials in Pennsylvania have asked for years to be allowed to start earlier.
So the obvious fix is to let them. Give officials a head start, and the long wait disappears. Or does it?
Arizona already gives its officials that head start: it can count mail ballots before election day. And yet in 2024 it needed until 15 November to finish counting, ten days after the election.
The reason sits at the other end of the calendar. Arizona lets voters hand in their mail ballot at any polling place, right up until the polls close. In Maricopa County around 225,000 people did exactly that, about one voter in ten. Before any of those envelopes can be opened, the signature on it has to be checked against the voter's record, and for ballots handed in on the day, that checking only starts once the day is over.
If it isn't the officials, and it isn't only the start, what actually sets the length of the wait?
Every state's law already sets two moments. The start: the earliest moment officials may open an envelope, check it and feed the ballot into a scanner. The cut-off: the last moment a ballot can still get into the count.
The wait is all the work still left when the polls close: everything the start held back, plus every ballot that comes in on the last day or after it, right up to the cut-off. Machines and staff change how fast that work goes, but those two moments decide how much of it there is.
If those two moments decide the wait, why doesn't every state simply set both as early as it can?
Florida comes close. Officials may start processing mail ballots 22 days before the election. A mail ballot must reach the county by 7 p.m. on election day. And within 30 minutes of the polls closing, the results of those ballots must be published.
The first price falls on the voter. A ballot mailed on the Monday before the election that reaches the office on Wednesday is simply not counted, however it was marked.
The second price is a risk. For up to three weeks a partial count already exists while people are still voting. If it leaked, it could shape how the rest of the state votes. The only thing standing between that count and the public is the law: releasing any of it before the polls close is a felony.
What if a state refuses to lose the late voter?
California does exactly that. A mail ballot counts if it was sent by election day and arrives within the next seven days. Since a Supreme Court ruling in June 2026 (Watson v. RNC, 5–4), that choice belongs firmly to each state. And if the signature on an envelope doesn't match, the voter can fix it until two days before the county certifies its result, which can be about a month after the election. California's real cut-off is weeks away.
The price is time. In 2022, a week after the election, control of the House of Representatives still depended on uncounted races in California. On 16 November the state still had about 2.8 million ballots left to count, and counting went on into December.
The rule we started with, in Pennsylvania, sits between these two. What does it buy?
It has its own logic. Nothing is opened before election day, so there is no partial count sitting in an office for weeks, and nothing that could leak. Its cut-off is early too: a mail ballot must arrive by 8 p.m. on election day.
The price is the one we started with: days of waiting, and overnight jumps that look like theft to anyone who doesn't know the rule.
Is there a way of setting the two moments that costs nothing at all?
There isn't. Each state has only chosen who pays: the voter whose envelope came a day late, a whole country kept waiting for weeks, or a count that looks suspicious for days.
| Design | Start | Cut-off | Who pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early start, early cut-off | Florida: 22 days before | 7 p.m. on election day | The late voter; and the guards of a partial count that exists for weeks |
| Wait for everyone | California: weeks before | Arrival up to 7 days later; signature fixes for weeks | Everyone waiting for the result |
| Sealed until the day | Pennsylvania: 7 a.m. on election day | 8 p.m. on election day | Days of waiting, and a count that looks suspicious |
So when a count runs on for days, "who is hiding votes?" is the wrong first question. The better one: what two moments did your state write into its law, and whose price did it choose?