Why does counting votes take so long?

Well here we are, it’s a few days post election and we’re still counting votes. It seems odd, right? We should know by now who won and who lost. Part of the problem is that racist piece of crap the electoral college. That isn’t the only issue though, if you want to know why we still have no clue who won, we need to remember that this was a manufactured problem.

People voted in record numbers this year. That’s the good news, people are actively engaging in democracy. The bad news is that a lot of those people voted in support of racism, homophobia, greed, etc. Basically all the horrid things in the world wrapped up into one party.

Let’s face it, neither party is great. Democrats basically roll over at every junction for Republicans. Why don’t we have universal healthcare? They “compromised” to try to be bipartisan. The problem is the “center” is so far right that it’s practically totalitarian. There is nothing virtuous about centerism, especially when the two ends of the spectrum are equality and nazism. So when I say this problem is caused by Republicans, they are the ones creating it, but Democrats have done virtually nothing to stop the system from being built this way.

In a functioning democracy the electoral college wouldn’t exist. In a functioning democracy we would be able to mail in our votes and that would be the end of the story. Yet, we’re still counting mail-in ballots, so the question is, if it’s so hard to get a mail-in ballot why are there so many of them that we can’t count them quickly?

The answer is we can! The problem is Republicans have made laws that don’t let the votes get counted until election day and in some cases they can’t even be processed until election day. Which if you think about it makes absolutely no sense until you realize that now that we are days into counting they are fighting the fact that these legitimate votes shouldn’t get counted.

That’s right, Republicans passed laws preventing vote counts prior to the election and then fight to make sure they can’t be counted after the election. Makes perfect sense, right? The interesting part is that this tactic has succeeded in the past (more). It’s not that we can’t count all the mail-in ballots, it’s just that efforts to do that are actively sabotaged at every step of the way. The sad fact is that Republicans tend to vote in-person, while Democrats tend to mail-in ballots. Keep in mind that mail-in fraud rates are so low they don’t actually affect the outcome, so they are safe, secure, and in some states (like oregon for example) mail-in ballots are the standard.

You can read more on which states allow processing or counting prior to the day of the election here. The fact of the matter is the longer the count takes, the more chances there are to stop it from happening. Meaning your vote may not amount to much, but don’t worry that’s by design! Maybe we should do something about that…