I never heard of counting votes a month later but I could be wrong. Definately need improvements.
Discussion
I looked into it after I made this note. It always happens. We just forget. States don't certify until mid December, allowing for plenty of time to count.
Wonder if the amount of counties still count at this stage have gotten worse or better over time. But thanks for informing me.
Laws, rules, and regulations have shifted over time, state by state, as it concerns both registration and voting deadlines. This has historically been true of absentee ballots of various kinds. Then there are differences in laws about how votes are tabulated, verified, processed, etc. But the biggest culprit, as i understand it, is the explosion of vote by mail from 2020 onward. As has been pointed out, this is what has likely caused CA to be so slow.
While I absolutely believe that there is both petty and high level fraud in elections, the likeliest reason CA is still counting is VBM and probably poor rules/regulations around the entirety of the voting process. It isn't that they *can't* do better—they are a one party state, it would be easy for them to make sweeping changes to improve the process if they want to—it is that they have no incentives to do so. In fact, they probably have incentives *not* to do so.