New York Times: Why New York Again Trails Almost All States in Counting Votes

Two weeks after Election Day, New York State was still counting hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots on Tuesday at a sluggish pace that some officials attributed to bureaucratic dysfunction and arcane state laws.

Whatever the cause, New York was sure to be among the last states, if not the last, to finish counting votes, and even some officials in charge of the process acknowledged that the delay was an embarrassment. …

Despite the long wait for final tallies, even those who favor reforming the state’s voting system urged patience given the unprecedented pressure the pandemic has placed on election officials.

“New York voters should understand that we will not know the results of many close races until some weeks later,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog group. ”And that is not the death of democracy, but a sign of life.”