Why New York Again Trails Almost All States in Counting Votes

[brooklynite]

New York Times

Two weeks after Election Day, New York State was still counting hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots on Tuesday at a sluggish pace that some officials attributed to bureaucratic dysfunction and arcane state laws.

Whatever the cause, New York was sure to be among the last states, if not the last, to finish counting votes, and even some officials in charge of the process acknowledged that the delay was an embarrassment.

And while attention remained focused on battleground states where mail-in ballots helped clinch the election for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., New York, a Democratic stronghold that was called for Mr. Biden almost immediately after polls closed, had mostly dodged national scrutiny for its lagging performance.

“If we were a swing state in this presidential election, we would be getting ridiculed across the world right now,” said State Senator Michael Gianaris, the deputy leader of the Democratic majority. “Florida, with all its terrible history of vote counting, manages to count votes before and on Election Day, even if they were mailed in.”

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. What's hidden much farther into the article

is that NYS doesn't open and start counting absentee ballots until at least a week after Election Day. That's dumb.

[moose65]

2. Wow - that IS dumb

Especially for a large state. I wonder what the rationale for that law was?

Here in NC, the Early Vote is counted first. The ballots are secured every day during the Early Vote period, but I don't think the actual counting starts till election day or maybe the day before. Mail-in ballots are opened and processed, but also not counted until Election Day or the day before.

Large blue states like NY should be able to count votes quickly and securely, and set an example for other states.