Florida’s deadlines are set to avoid having ballots arrive any later than when officials press “go” on the tabulator machines. The state has a receipt deadline for its absentee ballots, which means ballots that do not arrive by 7 p.m. local time on Election Day are not counted, regardless of when they were mailed.

The nation’s largest state by population has one of the longest vote-counting processes, both because of the sheer number of ballots and efforts to make voting easier.

These differences in how states count — and how long it takes — exist because the Constitution sets out broad principles for electing a national government, but leaves the det

Several of the yet-to-be-decided House races are in California, which had only counted about three-quarters of its votes statewide as of Tuesday.