Vote counting update thread

[memphis]

Why on Earth is vote counting so difficult?

I'm pretty sympathetic to the popular vote advocates, but considering that the election has been over for nearly two weeks and there are still literally millions of ballots that have to be counted makes a pretty strong case for the importance of the electoral college.

Even under a popular vote system, the election would have been called for Obama on election night. Not sure why you find this a case for the electoral college.

[memphis]

Back during the Florida 2000 fiasco, all counties were required to certify their results by one week after the election. Is this no longer the case in FL, or has FL completed its counting? And if FL could do this with the technology of 12 years ago, why can't every state do this now?

[memphis]

At this speed of vote counting, God forbid CA or NY ever become the deciding state in an election..

[memphis]

Only seven states left uncertified, and NY is the only one left with a significant number of uncounted votes as far as I can tell.  It will end up somewhere in the neighborhood of Obama 66 million votes, Romney 61 million.

So a drop in turnout of about 2% versus 2008? Not too shabby considering 2008 was crazy historic in several key ways, while 2012 saw candidates on both sides that rank and file members of the party were supposed to be unenthusiastic about.

[memphis]

Regarding the question of how states are called before all the results are in. Networks do not wait until they know with 100% accuracy. They have a statistical threshold, probably in the range of 99%. And voters are very predeictable, down to the precincts. It's actually pretty easy to predict.