> In my home state of Oregon, ballot results are released pretty much immediately, because the ballot deadline for receipt is 8 pm on election day.

Oregon is still counting, with a little under 90% of ballots counted by the latest numbers I can find.

> The same was true of California when I lived there.

It hasn't been in the 40+ years I've lived here, so I don't know what you're on about. Yes, since California did a quick flip between being a Republican lock and a Democratic lock in Presidential elections, you usually have a projected Presidential winner immediately. But the actual vote count usually takes quite a few days.

That's just California being noncompetitive in Presidential elections, not especially fast at vote counting.

> Why are the rules suddenly changed?

To the extent rules were changed for this election, it was because of a major public health emergency that raised concerns about the danger to both individual voters and the wider community from the usual level of in-person voting in places that don't already have predominantly mail-in elections.

> Did no one foresee that this would cause one of the worst elections in American history?

Nothing about the actual election itself, other than the abuse of the Postal Service in an attempt to prevent delivery of lawful votes, has been particularly bad. Yes, the fact that results are close in a number of states means that there isn't a projected electoral college winner yet. That's not a big deal.

Rules are decided by each state on its own. You can blame the constitution for deferring election procedures to each state.

In PA, for example, the legislature (which is GOP I might add) forbid counting mail-in ballots until election day. That basically guarantees delays.

Have you been around for Gore vs Bush? I'm not sure why you're claiming this is one of the worst elections. Most close elections aren't called on election day. Almost every state continues counting past election day. It's just you're only hearing about the ones that are close.

Why is it causing one of the worst elections in American history? I’ve heard that the votes received after the day, but postmarked on time, only number in the hundreds. If that’s true, they may not be consequential. States are still processing ballots which were received on time, like you say. So that’s not even a factor in why it’s taking so long yet.

The difference between PA and OR is that PA could not begin processing its mail-in ballots earlier than Election Day. Additionally, Oregon has had decades to perfect its mail-in system. Other states are processing the most mail-in ballots they’ve ever gotten, so we should expect that it won’t be very fast or smooth yet.

Additionally, if CA was a swing state, we’d be in the same position here. It’s still counting ballots and still releasing updates. It just doesn’t have a razor thin margin like the rest of the states, so it was projected to go blue very early.

What we’re seeing is expected given how tight the races are in each state, as well as how many more people voted by mail this year!

> Did no one foresee that this would cause one of the worst elections in American history?

Did you sleep through 2000?

This really isn't anything all _that_ unusual; the previous one was over quickly because the electoral college happened to fall that way (though the count went on for ages afterwards, and IIRC it took a day or so for the popular vote to flip), and the two before that weren't close enough for it to be an issue. It's still by any reasonable measure a lot less of a fiasco than 2000; it's pretty unlikely to rest on a couple of hundred votes or anything like that.

Many of these rules haven't changed at all, but there's a pandemic happening, so many, many, many more people have taken advantage of mail ballots than in years past.

Additionally, there were some lawsuits to prevent states from counting received ballots before Election Day, so some of this "confusion" is the direct result of efforts by the people filing those lawsuits to create it.

California is still counting its votes too. It's just not a close enough race for us to have to wait to find out what the results are.

Election laws are set by states, and they're all different.

Actually the Constitution says exactly that in the 10th Amendment "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

A deadline obviously exists: the day the electors cast their votes, which the Constitution stipulates to be "the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December", and which this year is December 14th. Other than that, as long as a state properly sends its designated number of electors to vote, how it chooses those electors is nobody's business but the state's alone. If the state is not able to decide, or sends the wrong number of electors, then it creates a problem for the Federal Government, so the Congress can pass a law to clarify what to do in such a case, and since this was the case in 1873, it passed the Electoral Count Act, which essentially sets a deadline for such troublesome states 6 days ahead of the 14th December date [1].

[1] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11641

"It's election day" doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. Absentee and other mail ballots have always been allowed to arrive late in the majority of states. There just aren't normally enough of them to make the difference in a close race like this one.

When I lived in California, it was common for military ballots to arrive up to two weeks after Election Day. That never mattered for the presidential race, but other races weren't officially records until everything was counted.

Because states have the right to choose their voting process as long as it complies with the 14th Amendment, and the process has worked for them as long as it has.

There's plenty of time between Election Day and when the votes actually have to be in, and it's actually unusual for all the votes to have been counted entirely by the end of Election Day even in a normal year from what I recall.

The votes aren't due for another little while anyway. So who cares whether Election Day is postmarked-by day or received-by day?

Each state's legislature decides that, so naturally states will differ on deadlines for when mail can arrive. Also, the count dragging on is because counting hasn't finished on the sheer quantity of mail-in ballots received before election day, not after (which are insignificant in number).

probably dont have access to individual vote data?

You shouldn't be looking at the popular vote if nobody is try to win the popular vote. It's like judging a basketball game by whichever team makes more passes.

I agree they'll walk it back as soon as it makes sense to do so, but not because they don't want to call a Biden win... but because it's their chance to get back on the fence in general, which is where any news organization should be at this stage. Overall, they have been calling states for Biden (and Trump) much sooner than most of the other news organizations, so they haven't shown any reluctance to calling it the way they see it. I wouldn't be surprised if they call a Biden win first -- it seems like they want to be breaking these calls and getting the traffic/views.

Brian Stelter (CNN Chief Media Correspondent/Anchor of Reliable Sources) said on Monday night that although the Fox Editorial department is a dumpster fire (not his exact words), the AP/Fox election desk is trustworthy and usually does a trustworthy job (it's not just Fox News alone, they're working alongside the AP).

I've been flipping through the networks and other than Fox News calling Arizona a little before they probably should have, they haven't shown any bias toward either candidate in the numbers. I can't say the same for the guests they have chosen to have on.

I bet Fox just holds back on calling NV for Biden (no need if something radical happens and it can be called for Trump) until both NV and either AZ is certain (and can either also be called for Biden or flipped for Trump without going in to an indeterminant state) or one of GA or PA (for Biden) is clear and can be safely called as well.

The process was changed, in the states where it changed, to prevent voters --- who tend to be significantly older than the general population --- from dying alone in isolated hospital rooms.

> but didn't anyone foresee that this will call into question the legitimacy of the election.

Those people were derided for questioning the legitimacy of the election.

Also some of the states were monumentally stupid in the way they designed their vote counting schemes regarding mail-in.

>There is no landslide, as everyone expected. This is the worst possible outcome.

I agree. A landslide in either direction leaves no doubts. Even if it was a mail-in landslide. An election of questionable legitimacy is how wars start. But that would be very in character for 2020.

> To recap, both candidates have claimed victory at this point,

No, they haven't. Only one has. The other has expressed confidence that they will win. but candidates do that all the time before votes are counted, or even cast, its not the same thing as claiming victory.

> This could have been prevented by simply not changing things at the last minute.

There's almost no evidence that that is the case.

> Instead, we've set the stage for an extremely contested, ugly election.

What set the stage from that is the fact that its extremely close in lots of swing states. Short of abolishing the electoral college or disregarding the will of voters (depending on whether you prefer the more or less democratic approach, compared to the status quo), I'm not sure what you think can be done about that.

> This could have been prevented by simply not changing things at the last minute.

No. For all the coverage that late arriving pre Election Day postmarked ballots are getting, they're a pretty minor factor; probably in the hundreds, not thousands, in PA so far, say. PA already had a rule that they couldn't start counting mail in ballots until polls closed; that's not new, and that's essentially what's causing the delay here, along with similar rules elsewhere. States which didn't have rules like this finished quicker, but these rules aren't new.

A very important thing to remember - The only thing that can "call into question the legitimacy of the election" is evidence of wrongdoing. None has surfaced.

If someone tries to tell you otherwise, demand evidence. And no, Twitter and Facebook conspiracy theories are NOT evidence.

BTW "both candidates" have NOT declared victory. Only Trump has.

> this could have been prevented by simply not changing things at the last minute

I don’t think this is true, though. The main change is that more people voted via mail. That isn’t a last minute thing. More people want to vote by mail this year, and many states allowed them to already. The problem is that states just aren’t used to processing this many mail ballots. One could argue that there weren’t enough last minute changes! For example, if PA had made a last minute change to begin processing mail ballots earlier than Tuesday, then they’d have finished much more quickly.

> didn’t anyone foresee that this will call into question the legitimacy of the election

In my opinion, the only reason we’re seeing so many people question it is because Trump has been baselessly claiming for months that the election would be stolen from him and that mail in voting is fraudulent. So yes, everyone was aware that Trump would call its legitimacy into question, but I haven’t seen a shred of evidence for it. In fact, two of his lawsuits were thrown out because there was no evidence onto back up his claims.

And to be completely fair, Biden hasn’t called the election, he just said that the path to victory seems clear. And that much is very obvious, since Biden does have more options for winning than trump does at this point, just because Trump’s only path to victory is by winning every state left, and Biden only needs one or two.

I knew the republicans in certain districts were making complaints about being denied access in ways that stretch what is plausible under incompetence alone but I didn't know any international groups were complaining. Can you provide a link?

there have been substantial delays in the mail (possibly by design). if a ballot is postmarked before the deadline, authorities are obligated to make every effort to count it.

I'm not sure what the deal is regarding the withholding of counts. seems unnecessary now that the polls are closed.

Only thing I can find on international observers is about North Carolina excluding them [0], and this:

CBS News: Trump's attempt to stop vote counting "a gross abuse of office," international observers say. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trumps-international-observers-...

[0] Raleigh News & Observer: North Carolina says no to international observers at election polling sites. https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/electi...