Why Does It Take So Long to Count Mail Ballots in Key States? Blame Legislatures

The slow pace of counting mail ballots in states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin was a key source of election disinformation in 2020. The delays provided President Trump and his allies with a pretext to claim that the election was being stolen from them as mail ballots, which overwhelmingly went for Biden, were counted and added to vote totals. “We were winning everything, and all of a sudden it was just called off,” Trump complained. “This is a fraud on the American public.” 

Far from being a fraud, a conspiracy, or even an accident, the slow count of mail ballots is a deliberate choice that lawmakers in key battleground states have made — and with disastrous consequences for public trust in elections. By building these delays into the system, lawmakers give oxygen to false claims of “ballot dumps” and other nonsense that has been used to sow distrust and has led to threats and violence against election workers. We will hear the same false claims after the 2022 election — in which mail ballots again appear to be tilting Democratic — and in every subsequent election until state legislatures fix the process.

State law prescribes the timing of the vote-counting process. Most states allow election workers to remove ballots from their envelopes and confirm the voter’s eligibility before Election Day, sometimes weeks in advance as the ballots arrive at processing centers. Nearly half of states — including Florida, Ohio, and Texas — allow election officials to scan ballots into tabulators ahead of Election Day so that these ballots can be counted immediately and included in results on election night. (No state allows results to be released before then.)