Why hasn't the US finished counting the votes in the US presidential election?

Problems with ballots, such as stains or voter verification, can make the vote counting process take longer.

California is still counting votes in the US presidential election. Photo: npr

Two weeks after the election, Hillary Clinton led US President-elect Donald Trump by two million popular votes; however, Trump was the ultimate winner because he won the electoral college votes.

Clinton's lead in the popular vote is expected to widen in the coming weeks – primarily because California, a populous state that leans heavily Democratic, has yet to finish counting votes, according to NPR.

One reason California is taking so long to count votes is the coffee stains on mail-in ballots. California allows voters to register to vote by mail, provided they submit an application at least seven days before Election Day.

"The coffee stains look like oval shapes (the voting method on the ballot is to fill in the oval)," said Alice Jarboe, the voter registration officer in Sacramento County. "So we have to remove all the coffee stains."

It appears some Californians cast their ballots while eating breakfast, as not only coffee stains, but jam and jelly also made counting difficult.

"We saw those things on the ballots," Jarboe said. "They jammed the counting machines, so we had to make copies of these ballots."

Reproducing a ballot is not a quick job. Two election workers will work together to copy the damaged ballots."One person reads, the other marks," Jarboe said. "And then they cross-check to make sure it's been copied correctly."

A quality control team will check it one more time. The damaged ballot will ultimately be stamped with a large blue "no longer valid" mark.

Jarboe said there's a quicker way to make corrections than using correction fluid: "We'll erase the problematic ovals. Sometimes voters make a mistake and then cross it out to choose again, we'll erase the unwanted part and stamp a star on the ballot – indicating that the ballot has been corrected," she said.

Additionally, there are "provisional ballots" that take a long time to process.Provisional ballots are used when there is doubt about whether a voter is eligible to vote, such as when the voter does not present an identification card, the voter's name does not appear on the list in a particular area, or the person's registration contains inaccurate information such as a wrong address or name.

"Verification slows down the vote counting process," said Paul Mitchell, one of California's leading election analysts. "However, if the trade-off for quickly counting votes is taking away the right to vote from some people, then I think it's not worth it."

California counties have more than two weeks to confirm the final ballot count. Several other large states, such as Florida and Virginia, have already completed that process.

Mitchell said that California's slow vote counting was preventing Americans from having an accurate understanding of the election results."Hillary Clinton's lead in the popular vote is now much larger than what was announced on Election Day or even a few days after the election," he said. "And that gap is widening."

It is highly likely that 14 million voters cast ballots in California, and Clinton won the state by a margin of nearly 2:1. However, the difference in the popular vote did not affect the overall outcome. Clinton was declared the winner of California and secured 55 electoral votes there. The reason Clinton won the popular vote but still lost the electoral vote is because she won overwhelmingly in populous states with a traditional Democratic leaning and lost narrowly in some other states.

Mitchell estimates Clinton could win the popular vote by 2.5 million votes nationwide against Trump – the largest margin for a losing electoral college candidate.

The Electoral College system is designed to give less populous states and rural areas in the U.S. a voice and influence in elections. It requires candidates to strategically "gather" enough states to secure at least 270 out of 538 electoral votes. After winning, Trump praised the system, saying it "brings all the states, even the smaller ones, into the game."

He said that if the election results were counted based on the popular vote, he would change his strategy, campaigning in major cities like New York, Florida, and California, and would "win even more decisively and easily."

According to VNE