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PakkyT t1_iztf17y wrote

Reply to comment by PaulitoTuGato in Recount flips Mass. House election to Democrat by 1 vote by TurretLauncher

There are a lot of different things that go into tallying a vote. Not all votes are counted initially for several reasons including poorly marked ballots that the machines can not correctly determine if it is a vote or not to ballots marked as "provisional" which will be counted eventually but likely not included that first night of results.

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PaulitoTuGato t1_iztfc7h wrote

So why would they even declare an outcome knowing it isn’t yet accurate?

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PakkyT t1_iztlt6f wrote

Because when the race is different by enough votes that those uncounted and problem votes won't matter. Meaning if you are showing 90% of the vote is counted and you are leading by 20,000 votes and they know the uncounted and problem ballots total up to 15,000, then even if every single one goes to the losing candidate, they still lose. So they call it. It is when the vote is close enough that those same ballots can pull the election one way or the other that they won't call a race for either until all are accounted for.

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