Do swing states in the US count their votes faster due to external pressure?

Question

On a related question Why do California and New York need so much time to count their votes compared to other states? Arcanist Lupus left the following comment:

Critically, on a macro scale nobody cares what the results of the California and New York votes are. They're so blue that their races can be called early and there's very little pressure to get the exact count done quickly like there is in the swing states.

Is the above a true statement? Do swing states try to count their votes faster due to the whole country waiting to see the results, compared to states like New York which always vote Blue for the President and the Senate?

Answer 1

Not in any kind of reliable way.

State governments are left to their own devices to determine how to conduct their elections. This means that the policies that govern those processes are subject to whatever institutional inertia normally exists for policy changes therein.

Add to this the fact that what states are battleground states is context driven, and not certain (Trump turned Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania into wins for him, despite their status as part of the 'Blue Wall') the rules governing the count of electoral results don't necessarily have time to change in response to discovering they are a battleground state for this election.

The COVID-19 induced a swell of mail-in ballots that is illustrative here. Some states coped well with the (very predictable) surge of mail-in voting, allowing officials to begin processing and tabulating those ballots ahead of the election (though not releasing results until after the polls closed on election day). While others, including putative battleground states, did not make necessary changes - resulting in lengthy delays.

Certainly the workers of the polls feel the pressure, but the speed of the count is a function of choices made months - sometimes years - in advance and may or may not be reflective of the hindsight understanding of the state as a battleground.

Certainly some states will experience political pressure to change their policies in the manner you're asking about, but it's by no means certain to succeed and if it does so - again, it's on a state by state basis.

So while the statement about New York and California may be true (because a lack of pressure will certainly not cause anyone to hurry), the reverse is not necessarily true and demonstrably false in several recent instances.