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.

Florida is a big state that counts almost all of its votes in a few hours. But in California, millions of ballots remain to be processed. This is unacceptable.

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.