Why is Nevada taking so long to count votes?

Although we are nearing the climax of the US presidential election, the state of Nevada has been lagging behind. The delay has brought about a lot of criticism and trolling on social media, however, the state officials insist that they have been weighed accuracy over speed in a year where there has been an unprecedented number of voter turnouts.

As per Associated Press reports, secretary of State spokeswoman Jennifer A. Russell said in an email, “We told everyone early on that results would take at least 10 days.” 

The universal mail-in ballot

In order to curb the spread of coronavirus during the election season, Nevada passed a bill in August to send all active voters mail-in ballots. 

The ballots can arrive within seven days of Election Day, which is Tuesday, but they have to be postmarked by November 3.

So they have continued to come in even after Election Day.  

Deanna Spikula, the registrar of voters in Washoe County, said to AP, “It’s been a different year for us.”  

“The volume is definitely something that we’ve never seen before in the state as far as receiving and processing mail-in ballots.”

Process of counting mail-in ballots

The ballots that arrive by mail are processed through a machine that verifies signatures. Often the staff has to manually verify those ballots that the machine rejects. 

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Then the number of ballots processed is matched with the total number of ballots received.

However, after receiving the vote, the registrar office has to verify whether the voter is eligible to vote or if he has already voted in-person. This keeps adding time to the overall counting process.

Current situation

Currently, the Nevada seat hasn’t yet been called and as per AP, 87% of the estimated votes have been counted by Friday afternoon. 

Joe Biden has an edge over Donald Trump with over 1.8 percentage points. According to the Associated Press, 6,32,558 votes have been polled in favour of Biden and 6,09,901 for Trump as of Saturday morning.