WASHINGTON (AP) — In the 2020 presidential election, Florida reported the results within a few hours of poll close of more than 99% of ballots cast.
In California, almost one-third of ballots were uncounted after election night. The state was making almost daily updates to its count through Dec. 3, a full month after Election Day.
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FILE - A worker processes mail-in ballots for the state's primary elections at the Orange County Supervisor of Elections office in Orlando, Fla., March 17, 2020. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP, File)
FILE - Workers count votes on election night at the Los Angeles County Registrar's Tally Operations Center in Downey, Calif., Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020. (Keith Birmingham/The Orange County Register via AP, File)
FILE - A worker prepares to take bags of ballots to be sorted and processed by the Los Angeles County Registrar at the temporary building at the Pomona Fairplex in Pomona, Calif., Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020. (Keith Birmingham/The Orange County Register via AP)
FILE - An employee at the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office conducts logic and accuracy testing of equipment used for counting ballots, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Lauderhill, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
FILE - Workers check on signed signatures on mail-in ballots at the new Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center in the City of Industry, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
FILE - This Nov. 4, 2016, file photo shows mail-in ballots being sorted at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
This wasn’t unusual or unexpected.
California, the nation’s most populous state, is consistently among the slowest to report all its election results. Florida, the third-most populous state, is generally among the first to finish.
The Constitution sets out broad principles for electing a national government and leaves the details to the states. The choices made by state lawmakers and election officials as they sort out those details affect everything from how voters cast a ballot, how quickly the tabulation and release of results takes place, how elections are kept secure and how officials maintain voters' confidence in the process.
The gap between when California and Florida are able to finalize their count is the natural result of election officials in the two states choosing to emphasize different concerns and set different priorities.
Lawmakers in California designed their elections to improve accessibility and increase turnout. Whether it’s automatically receiving a ballot at home, having up until Election Day to turn it in or having several days to address any problems that may arise with their ballot, Californians have a lot of time and opportunity to vote. It comes at the expense of knowing the final vote counts soon after polls close.
“Our priority is trying to maximize participation of actively registered voters,” said Democratic Assemblymember Marc Berman, who authored the 2021 bill that permanently switched the state to all-mail elections. “What that means is things are a little slower. But in a society that wants immediate gratification, I think our democracy is worth taking a little time to get it right and to create a system where everyone can participate.”
California, which has long had a culture of voting absentee, started moving toward all-mail elections last decade. All-mail systems will almost always prolong the count. Mail ballots require additional verification steps — each must be opened individually, validated and processed — so they can take longer to tabulate than ballots cast in person that are then fed into a scanner at a neighborhood polling place.
In 2016, California passed a bill allowing counties to opt in to all-mail elections before instituting it statewide on a temporary basis in 2020 and enshrining it in law in time for the 2022 elections.
Studies found that the earliest states to institute all-mail elections – Oregon and Washington – saw higher turnout. Mail ballots also increase the likelihood of a voter casting a complete ballot, according to Melissa Michelson, a political scientist and dean at California's Menlo College who has written on voter mobilization.
In recent years, the thousands of California voters who drop off their mail ballots on Election Day created a bottleneck on election night. In the past five general elections, California has tabulated an average of 38% of its vote after Election Day. Two years ago, in the 2022 midterm elections, half the state’s votes were counted after Election Day.
Slower counts have come alongside later mail ballot deadlines. In 2015, California implemented its first postmark deadline, meaning that the state can count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day as long as the Postal Service receives the ballot by Election Day. Berman said the postmark deadline allows the state to treat the mailbox as a drop box in order to avoid punishing voters who cast their ballots properly but are affected by postal delays.
Initially, the law said ballots that arrived within three days of the election would be considered cast in time. This year, ballots may arrive up to a week after Election Day, so California won’t know how many ballots have been cast until Nov. 12. This deadline means that California will be counting ballots at least through that week because ballots arriving up to that point might still be valid and be added to the count.
Florida’s election system is geared toward quick and efficient tabulation. Coming out of its disastrous 2000 presidential election, when the U.S. Supreme Court settled a recount dispute and George W. Bush was declared the winner in the state over Al Gore, the state moved to standardize its election systems and clean up its canvass, or the process of confirming votes cast and counted.
Republican Rep. Bill Posey, who as state senator was the sponsor of the Florida Election Reform Act of 2001, said the two goals of the law — to count all legal votes and to ensure voters are confident their votes are counted — were accomplished by mandating optical ballot scanners in every precinct. That “most significant” change means no more “hanging chads” in Florida. The scanners read and aggregate results from paper ballots, immediately spitting back any that contain mistakes.
Florida’s deadlines are set to avoid having ballots arrive any later than when officials press “go” on the tabulator machines. The state has a receipt deadline for its absentee ballots, which means ballots that do not arrive by 7 p.m. local time on Election Day are not counted, regardless of when they were mailed.
Michael T. Morley, a professor of election law at Florida State University College of Law, pointed out that Florida election officials may begin processing ballots, but not actually count them, before polls close. That helps speed up the process, especially compared with states that don't allow officials to process mail ballots before Election Day.
“They can determine the validity of ballots, confirm they should be counted and run them through machines," Morley said. "They just can’t press the tally button.”
Florida takes steps to avoid a protracted back-and-forth on potentially problematic ballots. At the precinct, optical scanners catch some problems, such as a voter selecting too many candidates, that can be fixed on-site. Also, any voter who’s returned a mail ballot with a mismatched or missing signature has until 5 p.m. two days after the election to submit an affidavit fixing it. California gives voters up to four weeks after the election to address such inconsistencies.
Read more about how U.S. elections work at Explaining Election 2024, a series from The Associated Press aimed at helping make sense of the American democracy. The AP receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
FILE - A worker processes mail-in ballots for the state's primary elections at the Orange County Supervisor of Elections office in Orlando, Fla., March 17, 2020. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP, File)
FILE - Workers count votes on election night at the Los Angeles County Registrar's Tally Operations Center in Downey, Calif., Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020. (Keith Birmingham/The Orange County Register via AP, File)
FILE - A worker prepares to take bags of ballots to be sorted and processed by the Los Angeles County Registrar at the temporary building at the Pomona Fairplex in Pomona, Calif., Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020. (Keith Birmingham/The Orange County Register via AP)
FILE - An employee at the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office conducts logic and accuracy testing of equipment used for counting ballots, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Lauderhill, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
FILE - Workers check on signed signatures on mail-in ballots at the new Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center in the City of Industry, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
FILE - This Nov. 4, 2016, file photo shows mail-in ballots being sorted at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
Vice President Kamala Harris is continuing her media tour Tuesday with three more interviews for national audiences, with Election Day now just four weeks away.
The Democratic presidential nominee appeared in New York with the women of “The View,” spoke with radio host Howard Stern, and taped a show with late-night comedian Stephen Colbert. The trio of appearances comes after Harris granted interviews to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which aired Monday night, and Anderson Cooper’s podcast, which was released Sunday.
The blitz comes after Harris has largely avoided interviews since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. Long past the midway point of her unexpected presidential campaign and with voting already underway, Harris is still introducing herself to Americans who will determine her fate in this year’s presidential election.
Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Here’s the latest:
President Joe Biden tore into Donald Trump at a fundraiser for Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn., in the Philadelphia suburbs.
The president highlighted the revelations in Bob Woodward’s upcoming book “War” that Trump secretly shipped COVID-19 tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“You see what came out today ? Came out today in the middle of the pandemic—when they were short on tests,” Biden said. “So he calls his good friend Putin, not a joke, and makes sure he had the tests.”
Opposition to Trump has been a uniting force for Democrats and Biden tried to drive that argument home for Casey, who is running against Republican David McCormick.
”When things need to get done, he crosses the aisle, shakes hands, gets things done,” Biden said. “He’s a guy kids can look up to. Meanwhile, his opponent is in lockstep with Donald Trump, voted by historians as the most dishonorable president in history.”
Harris had a beer during the taping of the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” though she didn’t actually drink much of it.
Colbert asked the vice president to have a beer with him during the taping and noted, “You asked for Miller High Life.” Harris opened her beer and took a sip, saying, “The last time I had a beer was a baseball game with Doug,” her husband, Second Gentlemen Doug Emhoff.
After his own drink, Colbert joked that it “tastes like the beautiful city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin” where it was brewed.
Colbert then referenced Trump losing manufacturing, auto plants and the election as president and if that made him a loser. Harris said she heard at one of her rallies and “I thought it was funny” before adding with a laugh, “This is what happens when I drink beer.
Harris is highlighting reports that then-President Donald Trump sent COVID-19 test kits to Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2020, when they were still very hard to find in the United States.
Appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Harris was asked about Bob Woodward ’s new book, “War” and said, “Donald Trump secretly sent COVID test kits to Putin for his personal use.”
“You remember what those days were like? You remember how many people did not have tests and were trying to scramble to get them. Remember how rare it was to have them. You remember people by the hundreds were dying every day,” Harris said, adding, “And this man is giving covid test kits to Vladimir Putin. Think about what this means.” She added, “He thinks Vladimir Putin is his friend. What about the American people? They should be your first friends.”
Trump has denied the book’s report, saying the information about the COVID tests was false.
Vice President Kamala Harris has taped an appearance on the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” the third of her trio of national interviews.
The Democratic presidential nominee spent Tuesday in New York and appeared on “The View” before sitting for an interview with radio personality Howard Stern and then doing the Late Show appearance.
Perhaps the most memorable of all her answers came on “The View,” when Harris was asked to identify a decision where she would have gone another way than President Joe Biden. Harris responded, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
Colbert also asked Harris what would the major changes compared to Biden. But the vice president still didn’t offer major breaks with the current White House occupant, saying, “I’m obviously not Joe Biden, so that would be one change” before noting that she’s also not former President Donald Trump.
As she has in the past, Harris also slammed Trump for spreading misinformation around federal recovery efforts related to Hurricane Helene, telling Colbert, “What just upsets me so is that any politician would play political games with these folks.”
“Have you no empathy, man,” she asked.
Utah’s outgoing U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney reiterated Tuesday in Salt Lake City that he will not vote for Donald Trump in November.
But the moderate Republican, who has been one of Trump’s most outspoken critics, said he won’t be joining a growing group of high-profile Republicans including former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney and a Trump White House aide, who have publicly endorsed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States, and you’re going to have to do the very difficult calculation of what that would mean, alright,” Romney said during a talk at The Hinkley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah.
The Utah senator said he wants to continue to have a voice in a Republican Party that he thinks might need to be rebuilt after this election cycle.
“I believe I will have more influence in the party by virtue of saying it as I’ve said it,” he explained.
Bob Woodward writes in his new book “War” that Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Vladimir Putin since leaving office and that he secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines in 2020.
Woodward reports that Trump asked an aide to leave his office at Mar-a-Lago so that the former president could have a private call with Putin in early 2024. Woodward also reports that Putin told Trump not to tell anyone about sending him COVID-19 test machines. Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said the book was filled with “made up stories.”
Harris, in an interview Tuesday with radio host Howard Stern, accused Trump of giving the machines to a “murderous dictator” at a time when “everyone was scrambling” to get tests.
“This person who wants to be president again, who secretly is helping out an an adversary while the American people are dying by the hundreds every day,” the Democratic presidential candidate.
The Associated Press obtained an early copy of the book, which is due out next week.
Black registered voters have an overwhelmingly positive view of Harris, according to a recent poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
About 7 in 10 Black voters have a somewhat or very favorable view of Harris, with few differences between Black men and women voters on how they view the Democratic candidate.
Black voters’ opinions of Trump, by contrast, were overwhelmingly negative, underscoring the challenges he faces as he seeks to erode Harris’ support among Black men.
But the poll also found that despite this dramatic gap in views, many Black voters don’t see Harris as a candidate who will set the country on a better trajectory or make a substantial difference in their own lives.
Jill Biden will return to the campaign trail this week on a tour of battleground states to help boost the Harris-Walz campaign.
Harris’ campaign and the White House announced Tuesday that the first lady will depart Friday on a five-day, five-state swing with stops in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The appearances will mark the first lady’s return to campaigning. She had campaigned extensively for her husband, President Joe Biden, when he was running for reelection. But she pulled back after Biden folded his campaign and endorsed Harris to replace him on the Democratic ticket.
With four weeks to go until Election Day, Harris’ campaign said the first lady will be urging people to get out and vote. The campaign noted that early voting is set to start Wednesday in Arizona and that mail ballots are going out in the five states that Jill Biden will be visiting.
President Joe Biden is campaigning through two key swing states, but two Democratic senators locked in competitive reelection battles are taking markedly different approaches to the outgoing president.
Biden will be fully embraced by Democratic Sen. Bob Casey when he participates in a private campaign fundraiser in suburban Philadelphia for the senior Pennsylvania senator.
But in Milwaukee, where Biden is spotlighting his administration’s efforts to replace the nation’s toxic lead pipes, incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin will be conspicuously absent.
Biden has spent scant time on the campaign trail since ending his reelection effort in July. That makes his stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — two tightly contested states that Harris and Trump see as crucial — all the more notable.
But as Biden makes a quick swing through the key states, two Democratic senators locked in competitive reelection battles are taking markedly different approaches to the outgoing president, whose approval ratings in a significant swath of the country remain in the pits.
Casey’s and Baldwin’s races are also seen as must-wins for Democrats who are trying to maintain their razor-tight control of the Senate.
Trump spoke at Trump International Doral in Miami, headlining a memorial service for the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, against Israel, telling his audience the threat of Hurricane Milton wouldn't have kept him away.
“I think I’m the only person who flew into Florida today,” Trump said at the outset of his remarks. “I wouldn’t have missed it, regardless.”
Milton, a Category 5 hurricane, could come ashore Wednesday in the Tampa Bay region.
Trump said he had never heard of a Category 5 hurricane hitting land. However, hurricanes Andrew and Michael in Florida were Category 5, the latter of which struck during his administration.
President Joe Biden has spoken with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to discuss preparations in Florida for the approaching Hurricane Milton and ongoing recovery efforts from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene.
The White House confirmed the president’s call with the governor after Harris earlier on Monday accused DeSantis of “playing political games” and engaging in “political gamesmanship” over the federal response to Helene.
Biden, according to the White House, asked DeSantis “to call him directly if there is anything that can be done to further support the response and recovery efforts.”
Harris’ office suggested earlier that DeSantis was dodging Harris, saying she reached out to the governor last week but the two never spoke.
DeSantis said that he “didn’t know that she had called” and “they didn’t call me.”
Biden also spoke on Monday with Tampa Mayor Jane Castor and received a detailed briefing from National Weather Service Director Ken Graham on the expected impact Milton will cause.
Graham stressed during the briefing that people in the storm’s path should evacuate now while there’s time to do so.
FILE - Former President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Turning Point CEO Charlie Kirk before speaking during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, Saturday, July 23, 2022, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force Two to depart for New York at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at LaGuardia Airport, Monday Oct. 7, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump waves as he departs an event marking one year since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force Two to depart for New York at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP)
FILE - Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak during a campaign rally at Dodge County Airport, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024, in Juneau, Wis. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
