Though that was because they just presented the AP data.
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Aussie here. The fast count is of first preferences only, essentially the same as first past the post.
A friend of mine works for the Australian Electoral Commission as a temp worker on polling day. She told me that the count on election night is done in the polling place, So after voting stops, they sit down with the lower house ballots and do a rough, fast count of first preferences. This gets sent to the AEC after just a few hours of work and produces the election night count.
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Within that remit, I feel speed of counting falls squarely into the “nice to haves” category.
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Mitch McConnell didn’t give a shit about Obama’s popularity and he won’t give a shit about Biden’s
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The issue isn’t really the speed. There is no important reason why counting needs to happen in 24 hours, and good reasons to be careful. There are also good reasons as well as bad why not all ballots can be counted immediately, such as provisional ballots and mail-in ballots arriving after election day. Plenty of states like California and New York will continue counting for some time. There is no mystery or urgency there so nobody cares.
The issue is the stupid electoral college that focuses the attention on a handful of “important” states with relatively close races. If this were a popular vote election, it would have been clear Tuesday night that Biden was going to win and there is no way ~ 20,000 votes in Pennsylvania could shift almost 4% of the election. Of course in a close popular vote race it would still take a while to be sure, but it is a lot less likely that it would come down to a few thousand votes.
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Elections in Australia are control by an Electoral Commission. Voting is compulsory in Federal, State and local Council elections. Those not voting may be fined. A typical small town may have several voting centres, usually at schools, town halls etc. where voter’s names will be crossed off a printed list of local residents.
If voters are not going to be present in their local area on election day (or elderly, or ill) they can apply for mail ballot forms which must be submitted prior to election day, or in major cities the Electoral Commission establishes temporary voting centres allowing people to vote prior to election day if they are not going to be in their usual residential area.
Election day is a Saturday and results for most electorates are known that night, as is the winning party, but counting in some individual electorates may run over into the next morning. Rarely do results take longer.
The vote is for the voter’s local electorate parliamentary representative (not the Prime Minister). The party that wins the most electorates is the winner and their leader becomes the Prime Minister.
The process may sound over-organised, but in reality it’s efficient and delivers results quickly and fairly.
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Still, the GOP didn’t start pulling out the really heinous moves until Obama’s approval rating started dipping below 50% after the first 18 months in office. For example, Obama’s first two SCOTUS appointees were both confirmed with the support of at least a few Republicans. (9 Republicans voted to confirm Sotomayor, 5 Republicans voted to confirm Kagan).
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I do so the best comments! You’re comments are loosers! Sad! Don’t listen to the fraudulent comments! My comments is win! MABBSA! Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where’s the Tylenol?
I really wish news agencies would calculate a rough value for how many voters wanted to vote, tried to vote, or voted and then had their ballots discarded without being tallied. It’s pretty clear that voter suppression is and has been an intergral part of political strategizing for as long as there’ve been elections here.
Why can’t we be honest about it?
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What I find most amusing about this is how everyone’s all uptight about Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Pensylvania’s vote counting speed, and they’re all up around 90% done right now.
Alaska meanwhile, is at less than 50%, hasn’t updated in days, and nobody cares. At all. It’s like, okay, we know you guys are the slow kids, you’ll get there eventually, and even if you don’t, we’ll just fill it in for you, we already know what you’re going to say.
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This waiting is fuct up and is bullshit. I’m sick of it. This should be done already.
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That’s some top-shelf comment / avatar synergy there. 
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“Fuck these limey bastards.” -Ghandi
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I am really looking forward to the state senate campaign ads: “Do you remember how agonizing the count was in 2020? How foolish our state looked, for waiting until after the election to start counting? This idiot was the one who forced that system upon us, in the vain hope that it might help his master Donald Trump steal the election by disenfranchising legal voters in this fine state of ours.”
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I strongly suspect that most voter suppression is getting people to not even want to vote so your metrics would undercount. Until 2020 I knew quite a few people who cared enough about politics to go to protests, but felt that voting was a lost cause since both parties were bad.
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It is amazing to me how excited people got when it seemed like Biden had 10 percent more popular support than Trump, and how dejected when it turns out Biden only had 5 percent more support.
Yeah there are cognitive biases around expected results but still. The problem is not having 10 percent more Trumpasses, it is the 90 percent that we have always known about.
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Zing! Now how about a version where there are, oh, let’s say, 146 million or so M&Ms to count. Hilarity ensues.
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I hate to it say it, but Alaska just isn’t “a big deal” in terms of the election, because they only have 3 electoral votes to give, and they already gave them to the orange asshat, even if they are not done with their popular count.
Regardless of the popular vote, we Yanks know that the electoral count is what currently determines the winner.
It’s an archaic system that is outdated and ineffective as hell, and rectifying/nullifying it needs to be one of the first priority reforms we force the next administration to make.
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Electoral votes are meaningless until the Electoral College actually casts those votes.
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