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> The mail-ins took longer to count, because unlike in Florida, they couldn't be counted early. So what you were watching as time went on was large tranches of

> The mail-ins took longer to count, because unlike in Florida, they couldn't be counted early. So what you were watching as time went on was large tranches of mail-in ballots that took forever to count coming in from D-heavy areas (or from areas where Biden outperformed Clinton, and where the mail returns were, like everywhere, more D than the election day returns). So if I understand correctly, you're saying that there's a gradual (in PA) or not-so-gradual-at-first-but-then-gradual (in MI) shift from in-person ballots to mail-in ballots, which explains these trends? That does seem possible. Another possibility is that the USPS processed the mail-in ballots from big cities differently from those from towns with smaller mail volume.

tptacek 6y ago
Here's another thing to look at: the Florida time series starts on election day. But vote counting Florida didn't start on election day. The state was allowed (because they are smart about this) to start counting 23 days in advance of e-day. The author of this thread is unaware of that, and has been fooled by Florida's efficiency into believing that vote returns are uniform everywhere. But that wasn't true in PA, where there was no preprocessing time at all. The clock started in PA on e-day, and the busiest, largest, most Democratic counties naturally took longer to count.
- guscost 6y ago
  Interesting, that's probably a big factor. Counterexample: Georgia, which started processing mail-in ballots 15 days before e-day (as far as I can tell): https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/battleground-states-process-mail-ballots-delayed-results/story?id=73717671 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/battleground-states-process-...
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Georgia does limited preprocessing of ballots before e-day, to catch and report invalid ballots, but can't count until the day.
    - guscost 6y ago
      Apparently not this time: > While county election officials were able to verify signatures and voter registrations upon ballot receipt, normally, absentee ballots can't be further processed or opened until Election Day. But this year, beginning 15 days before the 2020 general election, officials were allowed to open returned absentee ballots, remove those ballots from both the outer and inner secrecy sleeve envelope, and scan the ballots using a ballot scanner machine.
      - tptacek 6y ago
        They're scanned. They're not counted. They're not allowed to count until the poll close. (If you Google this you'll see a lot of other stories about why the counts from D-heavy areas were delayed; there were glitches).
      - guscost 6y ago
        Sibling reply since I've gotta get to bed: > At least three election workers must be present at all times during this processing and officials are prohibited from doing any tabulation of results until polls close at 7 p.m. on Nov. 3. At that point, tabulation is simply pressing a button.
        tptacek 6y ago
        Narrator: It wasn't simply pressing a button. https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/software-glitch-causes-delay-counting-thousands-of-votes-in-gwinnett-county https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/software-glitch-causes-dela... Again: we watched the ballots come in from Georgia. They came in county-by-county, in partisan-leaning lumps. There was a running joke on Twitter on Wednesday about people who have never been to Georgia suddenly acting like they knew where Clayton County was. It was a whole shared cultural experience! I'm still struck by the fact that you'd have had to not be paying attention at all to not understand that the results weren't arriving uniformly from across the state, or that different locations in the state have different partisan leans. From what I saw, the whole country was basically transfixed by those two facts. We got nothing done! For like a week! It's fine if you're not paying attention, but way less fine to build a narrative about voter fraud based on it.
- js2 6y ago
  NC also counted (er, tabulated) well in advance of Election Day.
matwood 6y ago
FL was allowed to process and count mail in votes early (they always deal with a lot of absentee votes b/c many people have their residence there to avoid state taxes). Once polls closed they were able to transfer those with the early batches of day of votes. Because absentee was such a big thing this year, many states were also telling the networks/reporters what each batch of counts was made up of (absentee vs. in person). Even in GOP areas, absentee went heavily towards Dem. The GOP legislature in PA denied the SOS request to begin processing absentee early. It was known for weeks that the count would not be done until Friday or possibly the weekend. Because the pandemic has been politicized, many GOP voters saw in person voting as a statement. Dem voters just wanted to vote. There also wasn't really a gradual shift. Day of gets counted more quickly because states use machines that take the the vote directly from the user at the time. Absentee takes longer because the votes are opened, verified (some states check signatures, but I think all make sure the it's not a double vote, etc...), cured, and then the ballot is ran through a flattener then vote counter. I saw a story that this took longer in PA, because many of the votes had been sitting folded up for almost a month by the time they were opened.

tptacek 6y ago

Here's another thing to look at: the Florida time series starts on election day. But vote counting Florida didn't start on election day. The state was allowed (because they are smart about this) to start counting 23 days in advance of e-day. The author of this thread is unaware of that, and has been fooled by Florida's efficiency into believing that vote returns are uniform everywhere. But that wasn't true in PA, where there was no preprocessing time at all. The clock started in PA on e-day, and the busiest, largest, most Democratic counties naturally took longer to count.

guscost 6y ago
Interesting, that's probably a big factor. Counterexample: Georgia, which started processing mail-in ballots 15 days before e-day (as far as I can tell): https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/battleground-states-process-mail-ballots-delayed-results/story?id=73717671 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/battleground-states-process-...
- tptacek 6y ago
  Georgia does limited preprocessing of ballots before e-day, to catch and report invalid ballots, but can't count until the day.
  - guscost 6y ago
    Apparently not this time: > While county election officials were able to verify signatures and voter registrations upon ballot receipt, normally, absentee ballots can't be further processed or opened until Election Day. But this year, beginning 15 days before the 2020 general election, officials were allowed to open returned absentee ballots, remove those ballots from both the outer and inner secrecy sleeve envelope, and scan the ballots using a ballot scanner machine.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      They're scanned. They're not counted. They're not allowed to count until the poll close. (If you Google this you'll see a lot of other stories about why the counts from D-heavy areas were delayed; there were glitches).
    - guscost 6y ago
      Sibling reply since I've gotta get to bed: > At least three election workers must be present at all times during this processing and officials are prohibited from doing any tabulation of results until polls close at 7 p.m. on Nov. 3. At that point, tabulation is simply pressing a button.
      - tptacek 6y ago
        Narrator: It wasn't simply pressing a button. https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/software-glitch-causes-delay-counting-thousands-of-votes-in-gwinnett-county https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/software-glitch-causes-dela... Again: we watched the ballots come in from Georgia. They came in county-by-county, in partisan-leaning lumps. There was a running joke on Twitter on Wednesday about people who have never been to Georgia suddenly acting like they knew where Clayton County was. It was a whole shared cultural experience! I'm still struck by the fact that you'd have had to not be paying attention at all to not understand that the results weren't arriving uniformly from across the state, or that different locations in the state have different partisan leans. From what I saw, the whole country was basically transfixed by those two facts. We got nothing done! For like a week! It's fine if you're not paying attention, but way less fine to build a narrative about voter fraud based on it.
js2 6y ago
NC also counted (er, tabulated) well in advance of Election Day.

matwood 6y ago

FL was allowed to process and count mail in votes early (they always deal with a lot of absentee votes b/c many people have their residence there to avoid state taxes). Once polls closed they were able to transfer those with the early batches of day of votes. Because absentee was such a big thing this year, many states were also telling the networks/reporters what each batch of counts was made up of (absentee vs. in person). Even in GOP areas, absentee went heavily towards Dem. The GOP legislature in PA denied the SOS request to begin processing absentee early. It was known for weeks that the count would not be done until Friday or possibly the weekend. Because the pandemic has been politicized, many GOP voters saw in person voting as a statement. Dem voters just wanted to vote. There also wasn't really a gradual shift. Day of gets counted more quickly because states use machines that take the the vote directly from the user at the time. Absentee takes longer because the votes are opened, verified (some states check signatures, but I think all make sure the it's not a double vote, etc...), cured, and then the ballot is ran through a flattener then vote counter. I saw a story that this took longer in PA, because many of the votes had been sitting folded up for almost a month by the time they were opened.