The UK has counted over 27 million ballots in a matter of hours?

[Barack_America]

And most of these paper ballots?

Wow. Shame on us.

[yeoman6987]

1. Damn. We are horrible in our elections by comparison.

[HerbChestnut]

2. Yep. Perfect example of how messed up our electoral process is.

The BBC even has links to explain how votes are counted. It's amazing.

[scscholar]

60. This. CA doesn't want to count those votes

If they did, then they would count them.

[Raster]

3. YES! Isn't it fucking amazing that if a country really, really wants...

...to count MILLIONS OF BALLOTS accurately and efficiently IN A SINGLE DAY, it can be done.

And we are conditioned to laud and applaud the massive cluster that is American elections. "voice of the people"
BALDERDASH.

[HerbChestnut]

5. Most appropriate use of the word 'Balderdash' I've seen in quite some time

Well done.

[jillan]

4. Agreed.

[sheshe2]

6. Yum...

Question, please?

Do we have valid links and comparisons? Love to see some statistics here.

TIA

[HerbChestnut]

9. Here

http://www.bbc.com/news/politics/eu_referendum/results

[sheshe2]

14. Thanks for that....Herb

Now the US stats? State by state. County by county. Asking so we can have a fair comparison.

TIA

[Barack_America]

46. Switch CA to paper ballots and you'll have your comparison.

We can't even count computer-tabulated ballots in a single night.

[CreekDog]

47. Most California ballots were mail in, paper ballots

Many of those ballots didn't arrive until the days after the election.

It is much easier to count an election without mail in balloting and with ONE item on it than the complex election California held, which included mail in voting.

[Spacedog1973]

70. What?

There were postal votes.

Also the speed of the vote counting is the same regardless of the type of election. General elections take the same amount of time and have various parties in different constituents.

[swhisper1]

7. they are in one time zone, so its quick

[HerbChestnut]

8. Meanwhile, in California...n/t

[swhisper1]

11. our electoral system really sucks, doesnt it?

[HerbChestnut]

12. Yep.

There's been a lot of light shed on the electoral process during this election, and the method of counting votes is one of them.

[still_one]

37. also they only had one issue, yes or no

[KingFlorez]

10. To be fair, they have far fewer voters than we do

And less land mass. That sort of factors in to how long it takes to get counted and certified.

[HerbChestnut]

13. Meanwhile, in California... :P

[NWCorona]

16. Exactly

[CreekDog]

48. No not exactly, be you are the constutional right to say something wrong and uninformed

you don't have the constitutional right to have the wrong thing you said be correct.

[KingFlorez]

17. You already said that upthread

California has a whole lot of provisional ballots to count and I'm not sure if the UK has such a thing.

[HerbChestnut]

18. I thought it warranted repeating

Edit: Spelling and tiredness

[pkdu]

27. meanwhile ...it was a YES/NO question...not a multi-candidate , multi-party, initiative laden ballot

try to compare apples to apples.

[eppur_se_muova]

29. Time to count votes should increase only logarithmically with population ...

since vote-counting is done in a hierarchical tree. We could do it in this country, it's the election thieves (GOP, I'm looking at you) who are preventing us from doing so.

With modern communications, geographical size won't matter -- the slow step is people getting to the polls. Once the polls close the time to count ballots should have nothing to do with geography.

[eastwestdem]

32. And only one item on the ballot...that makes it much easier. nt

[Bohemianwriter]

42. They have the vote in one single day...

And count paper ballots in one day...With representatives for all parties present.

In the meantime, U.S. election cycles are like a long running, daily soap opera, or a reality TV show where paper ballots goes mssing, voting machines goes broke in certain areas, changing of opening hours, closing locations, purging of millions of votes, and hands down rigging the vote right in front of delegates. And huge disrepencies between exit polls and the official result (having left out all the voters who still stood in line when media declared a winner).

Not only that, every state seem to have their own quirky little rules that differs from each other, they have the primaries over a timespan of more than 5 months!
¨
There should be time to count every single vote within five months before the convention before they call out a winner (while voters are still standing in line).

And what we hear is that all these purged voters were incompetent, didn't have some paperwork done correctly and they all happened to the voter for one candidate and not the other (as if the voters for the one candidate didn't know the "rules" of a "democracy" or something)

This election cycle have been nothing but one big MSM hate fest against one candidate's voters. And the same MSM gave them the same treatment as they gave OWS.

To be fair, the Amercan election should inspire plenty of comedy if you ask me. (The only way one can get away with pointing out everything that is wrong with America)

To be fair, the American democracy died in 2001.

[philosslayer]

64. Stop it

"we suck". Didn't you get the memo?

[CanonRay]

15. I was thinking the same thing

Why the hell are we using voting machines?

[sheshe2]

19. Where are the comparisson stats for the the US?

This is the third time I asked.

TIA

[HerbChestnut]

20. Go find it.

[link:http://www.google.com|

[sheshe2]

21. Your OP.

No Links.

When Asked, Posted UK Links.

Zip For US.

Zip..

When Asked Again I Got the Google Answer.

So You Have UK Stats Yet None For the US.

Thanks. Loud and Clear. Gottcha.

[HerbChestnut]

22. Don't be lazy. Go out and do your own research.

The internet is full of wonderful things. Explore it sometime.

[sheshe2]

25. Lol!

[pkdu]

30. Yep - lets compare a "Yes/No" vote in a country with 30 million voters with a muti-candidate , multi

option , multi down ballot election with 200 million(?) voters?

[sheshe2]

31. ;)

....

[eastwestdem]

33. Exactly!! nt

[Barack_America]

45. How do you equate 30 million paper ballots to 150+ million computer ballots?

My money is still on the paper ballots being the tougher task.

Shall we switch California to paper ballots for a more direct comparison?

[LiberalFighter]

56. Don't forget there are different ballots.

[RazBerryBeret]

53. google is your friend. n/t

[NYC Liberal]

23. The US has 180,000 precincts across 50 states, and each state has different

processes for voting and counting those votes. The polls also open and close at different times in every state.

The UK has 382 voting areas with a uniform process for voting and counting votes.

[HerbChestnut]

24. Thank you for supporting the OP's point

[sheshe2]

26. They didn't.

[Retrograde]

28. The Brexit election had only one issue on the ballot

with a yes or no answer. California's recent election had at least 7 contests per ballot, and who knows how may local issues. I don't know if UK election laws allow for mail-in or provisional ballots, which is what's taking up most of the time in counting the California ballots.

[peace13]

34. 6 if you were given the one without the Presidential contest!

I thought the mail in's were counted first and that is why they called for Hillary so soon. I am so confused!

[still_one]

38. It depends when they were mailed in.

[Retrograde]

49. How one large CA county counts votes

Santa Clara's process. Briefly, early mail-in votes that have already had the signatures verified, then the votes cast at local precincts as they come in, then mail-in ballots delivered to a polling place or received in the mail later (as long as they were postmarked by election night), provisional ballots, and ones the machines can't read.

If you look at the stats at the oft-cited Secretary of State's website, you'll see that the bulk of the votes still uncounted are the provisional ballots. These are from people who had some sort of problem at the polling place: they need to be checked individually to make sure the person casting the vote was actually eligible to vote in that county.

[peace13]

50. Yes, from what I have read..

..many people needed a provisional in CA because they did not receive their mail in ballot. There is some evidence that those mail in ballots were voted in the system without the voters knowledge. People need to check with the BOE and follow up with any inconsistencies.

[Moliere]

35. You seem to think this is a bug in our system

The vote tabulation systems work exactly as the powers that be want them to work: fungible and manipulateable with no audit trails. This is a feature not a bug

[ChisolmTrailDem]

36. I know, right! Some people just like to continue pretending it's anything esle but that. nt

[peace13]

39. In Ohio you can walk into the BOE and vote, weeks before Election Day.

It is done on paper and put in an envelope and then into the box. If a person walks in off the street to drop off their paper ballot they are told to put it in the same box. At the end of the day the BOE has no official count of how many ballots are in that box. This happens times eighty eight counties across the state. It seems that there would be a better system to make the BOE accountable for each ballot.

[LiberalFighter]

58. That seems odd there is no accounting of when a person's ballot arrived.

When I vote absentee here in Indiana I can track the status of my ballot from when they receive the request to when they receive it in their office.

[peace13]

61. This would be if you walked your mail in ballot into the BOE.

We just drop it in with the ballots of the walk in voters. I would like to see it counted so that at the end of the day the numbers can be tallied. I Don't know what they do, but my guess is that they empty the box at that is it. There really is nothing else they can do. As an ex poll worker this kind of thing makes me crazy! If we issued more or less ballots than we have at the end of a day, we have a problem! A big one.

[LiberalFighter]

62. They should make sure all ballots are accounted.

Are drop ballots sealed in an envelope with the voters id?

I would think it would be to make sure there isn't any double voting.

[peace13]

69. I'm sure that they are marked. I have never used an absentee ballot, as they are called in Ohio.

Since the conception of the black boxes I have always gone into the BOE and used a paper ballot. Absentee ballots are noted in the computer at the polls so the voter can not vote in person. Things got pretty complicated! It makes it hard to keep track for sure.

[Orsino]

55. It's a series of epic failures of our system...

...and a place to hide mountains of corruption.

[Bohemianwriter]

40. Are they stll counting the votes in California?

Or did they purge every vote after 2.9 million votes?

[MADem]

41. Maybe we should have our federal government run national elections, too, instead of leaving them to

state actors and private clubs otherwise known as parties.

We're rather unwilling to PAY for that, perhaps?

[realmirage]

43. In November we'll count a shitload more than that in one night

[DetlefK]

44. Votes are counted in parallel in every precinct/county.

Why are some US precincts unable to finish counting in one night???

[7wo7rees]

51. Impressive. nt

[jberryhill]

52. Happens several times a day at horse racing tracks around the country

If you want to see reliable vote counting in action - watch the tote board at a race track during a stakes race as it tabulates bets from around the world made on horse races.

[LiberalFighter]

54. It is not the same as here.

There ballots did not have a slew of candidates running for various offices. There ballots had one question, "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?"

They also had a whole slew of election workers to count the ballots.

[obamanut2012]

57. They were counting YES OR NO, that's it

Comparing crumpets and maple bars.

[Blue_Adept]

59. Ah, the difference between a singular nation with one main design

and a republic with fifty states that have different ways elections are handled.

You either have a single nation or you have states. In a sense, like this, you cannot have both. Such as it has been, such as it always shall be.

[Starry Messenger]

63. Sorry my state is boring you.

[tabasco]

65. Amazing, isn't it?

There's not much emphasis on a functioning democracy here in the good old USA.

[BlueStateLib]

66. simpler ballot

[brooklynite]

67. Does the UK allow providional ballots that have to be validated?

Or do they just say "tough" if you're not registered?

[Night Watchman]

68. Much Smaller Country

In area and population.

[hobbit709]

71. Each state counts their own so size is similar.

It's not like all ballots go to a national counting center before being counted.