Mail-In Ballots Delay Primary Election Results

WASHINGTON — Voters in Kentucky and New York were selecting nominees in extraordinary circumstances on Tuesday, as fears about the coronavirus reduced the number of polling places and led to a surge in absentee balloting that was almost certain to delay the results, possibly for days.

Kentucky Democrats were deciding who would be their nominee against Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, in a race that was testing the power of money against the potency of the grass-roots activism that has sprung up around the Black Lives Matter movement.

Kentucky and New York had primaries Tuesday, but the winners of the closest races probably won’t be known until next week. What’s going on?

Get used to it. Slow vote counts and delayed results are a feature of elections during the pandemic and are likely to continue into the general election in November, when many election officials say that, absent a landslide, it won’t be clear who won the presidential election for several days.