Have we gone backwards in running elections?

That question occurred to me after reading this update from my friend and expert Nevada analyst, Jon Ralston. The Silver State’s outcomes in this election have an outsize impact at the moment on control of both chambers of Congress, especially the Senate. And as I waited with bated breath for those results to offer a conclusion to that suspense, both Jon and I were stunned to learn that we will have to wait until tomorrow or Friday to get that conclusion:

Same goes for Washoe County, our @RenoKimBurrows has confirmed.

Mail ballots dropped at polling places today won't be counted tonight. https://t.co/yZ9RJ0SXEA

— Ben Margiott (@BenMargiott) November 9, 2022

The New York Times confirms that this morning, and it’s worse than we thought last night:

Overwhelmed election officials in Nevada say that they have been flooded by thousands of mail-in ballots, and that it may take several days to count the votes and upload results.

Last year, the state began requiring that mail-in ballots be sent to every registered voter. While ballots must be postmarked by Election Day, they can be counted if they arrive as late as Saturday.

Elections officials have emphasized the need for patience and have not offered predictions on how quickly they will be able to offer tallies.

Several days? No idea when the races will be fully counted? Why? Are we still running the Pony Express in the US?

Last night, every media outlet in the US lectured voters on “patience” in the counting of votes in yesterday’s elections. “Patience” isn’t the problem, however. The problem is incompetence — incompetent execution at times, such as in Arizona, but mainly incompetent design. There is no valid reason for Americans to wait days or weeks for reliable results in elections — no reason except the vanity of politicians and their pandering to activists.

It’s not just Nevada, either. In several states, the handling of early voting and mail-in ballots results in either delayed reporting, blue and red “mirages,” and confusion over what was getting counted and when. And in a few cases, such as in Nevada and Arizona, we have days to wait while officials wade through ballots and counting controversies.

None of this amounts to “fraud” on its own; this is an issue of incompetence both in design and operation. However, this incompetence creates unnecessary uncertainty and delays, which only add to the concerns over irregularities and gives fodder to suspicions of fraud. That’s especially true when states like Florida and Minnesota keep demonstrating that best practices allow for a fast, reliable, and auditable vote count process that settles elections in hours rather than days, especially across an entire state.

The real sources of these delays and irregularities are early and mail-in voting. Both are bad ideas for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that voters who check out early cast votes without necessarily getting a full picture of the race. Practically speaking, however, mail-in voting has become too much of a needless complication — and one mainly prompted by a pandemic whose course has already run. It isn’t needed, not when in-person early voting is available.

But even if mail-in balloting is used, a deadline that allows for those ballots to be fully counted on Election Day should be in place. That deadline should be well before Election Day — perhaps as much as a week before Election Day — to allow voters a chance to both ensure the ballot’s arrival and to check that it got counted. And then when the ballots do get counted, they all get counted together and reported at the same time.

Each state should have as its goal the same that Florida and several other states have: reliable and accurate results within hours rather than weeks. The delays such as those seen in Nevada should be unacceptable, especially on the scale involved.  If you want to build confidence in elections and eliminate the concerns over fraud in the current paradigms of voting, those changes have to be made by states indulging in these practices.

It would be far better to eliminate mail-in balloting except for limited-access absentee and military voting, and require in-person voting instead. Best practices would also eliminate electronic voting (lookin’ at you, Texas) in favor of optical-scan paper ballots that can be tabulated quickly by machine but also easily hand-counted when the need arises. Not only do those election architectures deliver fast and reliable results, they build voter confidence in the outcomes of those elections.

You don’t have to assume fraud to object to these substandard outcomes. Incompetence is just as unacceptable, and should be at least as accountable.

Shouldn’t we design election infrastructure to deliver fast and reliable results when we can easily get both at the same time?

Shouldn’t we build our democratic functions in such a way that enhances their transparency and our confidence, rather than make them opaque and incomprehensible?

Every state in the US should take a lesson from Florida and other states that succeed in those outcomes. If large scale mail-in voting results in days of delays and confusion over the results of elections, then we should demand an end to those practices immediately. Let’s not do another election with these failures still in place.

Now that the midterms are over, we must prepare for the all-important 2024 presidential cycle — in fact, even more urgently than before. We need to make sure Democrats are one and done in the White House, and keep them locked out of control of Congress too. If you want real in-depth analysis and exclusive content and wish to support the long-term mission, join HotAir VIP today and use promo code VIPWEEK to receive 45% off your membership!