Late-counted ballots are helping the blue wave of 2018 crest hard for Democrats more than two weeks after Election Day.
Late-counted ballots — mail-in, provisional, and other types — are giving the party healthy padding for the House majority it won Nov. 6. House Democrats netted 39 new seats, and late-tallied ballots in California’s 21st District could still carry to victory the Democratic challenger to GOP Rep. David Valadao.
That’s been the case in several other California districts, where Republican candidates seemed to hold the lead shortly after Election Day, with all precincts counted. As more ballots came in, though, Democratic candidates edged ahead — to the point that the party has won six of seven California districts that in 2016 voted for a Republican House member and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
And on Tuesday, Democrats won a seat in deep red Utah when late-counted ballots went against incumbent Republican Rep. Mia Love and in favor of Democratic challenger Ben McAdams.
To the south, the Arizona Senate Democratic nominee, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, staged a come-from-behind win over GOP Rep. Martha McSally, when more than 800,000 ballots counted after Election Day put her over the top.
It’s all made for the election night tradition of calling close races one way or another a precarious exercise, at best. Most states allow for provisional ballots to be cast on Election Day by voters whose registration cannot yet be verified. In 2016, 2.1 million voters cast a provisional ballot, 71 percent of which were eventually counted after the registration was verified.
Then there are the millions of mail-in ballots that had not been tallied on election night. For those to count, elections officials have to compare voters’ signatures to signatures they have on record — a time-consuming process.
“Although the American tradition of watching Election night media ‘call races’ gives us the impression that all votes are, or should be, counted on election day, it’s really an unreasonable expectation,” said Jennifer Victor, associate professor of political science at George Mason University’s Schar School Policy and Government. “Elections are administered by local agencies and they often have many thousands of ballots to tally in a short period of time. Getting the count right is more important than getting it fast, so we should expect many localities to still be counting ballots after Election Day.”
Democrats, on the whole, have an advantage in various types of late-tallied votes. That’s due partly to the 2002 Help America Vote Act. The federal law, enacted in the wake of the disputed 2000 Florida presidential recount controversy, requires states to institute provisional ballots for voters with a disputed registration status. Generally, voters who cast a provisional vote are more likely to be young people or members of a racial or ethnic minority group, which tends to favor Democratic candidates.
“The provisional ballots are more likely to be cast by young people and people of color because these populations are more likely to be in a situation where they’ve moved, or changed identifications, or some other circumstance that would lead to a provisional ballot,” Victor said, in an email. “To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with casting a provisional ballot. It’s election administrators’ way of double-checking that a particular voter is casting a legal vote. The opportunity to cast provisional ballots adds integrity to the voting system.”
Academic studies have shown Democrats are slightly more likely to vote by mail than Republicans. Democratic campaigns in recent years have placed increased emphasis on turning out voters before Election Day. Republican-leaning voters, meanwhile, often vote in the more traditional manner of showing up to a polling place on Election Day itself. Because those votes are tallied immediately, and early votes take longer to tally, Republican candidates often appear to be ahead when in reality swaths of ballots remain to be counted.
Not all late counting has gone Democrats’ way. In Florida, Republican Gov. Rick Scott picked up a small number of late voters in his challenge to Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, which he eventually won. Same for Florida’s governor-elect, Republican Ron DeSantis, whose lead grew after Election Day over Democratic rival Andrew Gillum.
On the whole, though, late-counted ballots in 2018 helped push the Democratic wave toward landfall in a significant way — which will pay off in early January when the party assumes control of the House for the first time in eight years.
