It’s not the population. It’s the number of positions/things you are voting for.   New Zealand doesn’t vote for sheriffs, judges, mayors etc. AFAIK so there is much less to count.  More population should lead to more polling stations. These need to be collated but that is a relatively quick job compared to counting the votes. 

Timezone spread also makes the night longer.  If you have a result within 2 hours of the Hawaiian polls closing you are on par. 

-- 
Mark Andrews

On 17 Oct 2020, at 07:49, Alain Hebert <ahebert@pubnix.net> wrote:

     Hi,

    Beside being:

        . a country with 1/10th of the population;

        . centralized voting rules;

        . <yadi yada>...


    PS: And there is a lot in that <yadi yada> about the (publicly) unreal amount of insanity being pulled by the GOP  this year.

-----
Alain Hebert                                ahebert@pubnix.net   
PubNIX Inc.        
50 boul. St-Charles
P.O. Box 26770     Beaconsfield, Quebec     H9W 6G7
Tel: 514-990-5911  http://www.pubnix.net    Fax: 514-990-9443
On 2020-10-16 02:36, Sean Donelan wrote:
On Tue, 13 Oct 2020, Valdis Klētnieks wrote:
my reaction was more like
<voice="Gomer Pyle">
Surprise, surprise, surprise...
</voice>

S.N.A.F.U.

Other SNAFUs, Georgia had technical problems with its voter database systems during the first couple of days of early voting. Expect all sorts of minor problems throughout the election and afterwards. Nonetheless they are unlikely to significantly impact the results (hopefully), but will generate lots of noise.

Its not just underfunded state I.T. systems.  Even very large social media companies can have technical Oopsies.  Again, hopefully Twitter won't fall down again during the evening of November 3rd.  The digeratti will lose thier minds.

Even if Twitter or another major social media platform does go belly-up, most likely it will be a normal technical problem.  Wishing the FBI & CISA & OGAs watch officers a very boring night on November 3rd.



In other news, New Zealand is having national elections this weekend.  New Zealand is usually ranked in the top 10 best election administrations worldwide. NZ expects to have the majority of ballots counted within 2 hours of their polls closing on Saturday evening.

Jealous of the Kiwis and their competently run elections. :-)