Absentee counting begins first thing in the morning and some places will have their numbers right away.

In the most populous one, the mail-in ballots are opened and counted when the polls close. They do some preliminary work - at least in my county - in that they verify the address and signature of the voter as the ballots come in (I'd been obsessively checking my county's site until I saw that my ballot was received and accepted), but they don't do any actual counting until election day. The first actual returns you'll see from California will be the early and mail-in ballots.

Remember California's primary last June? It took several weeks to get all the ballots counted because 1) all mail-in ballots have to have their signatures checked by a human, 2) California accepts mail-in ballots until the end of election week provided they are postmarked by the close of election 3) ballots that can't be machine-scanned have to be checked and maybe counted by hand, 4) provisional ballots have to be verified one by one, and 5) some counties seem to take their own sweet time getting their counts done. The counties have 30 days to get their certified results to the Secretary of State: the results aren't official until that's done.

Realistically, we'll have a pretty good idea of certain races in California - President, Senator - by late Tuesday night. I expect some races - we have a few close ones for Congress, and all those propositions - will not be settled for days if not weeks.

I hope that many states operate like the first comment, above.

And some pretty remote polling sites in places like Trinity County with its twisty, unlit mountain roads, and San Bernardino County, where it can take upwards of an hour to get the ballots to the county registrar after the polls close.

Also, since more than half the state votes by mail these days, verifying the signatures, opening the envelopes, and feeding the multiple pages (my county was "only" five pages this year - San Francisco County has twice as many propositions as the state does for its residents to vote on) into the scanners takes time. And we at DU want paper ballots, remember?

I don't see how California's process is a mess. The goal is to get every valid vote on every valid ballot counted, and if that means the East Coast pundits have to wait for a final official count (not that they will) - well, that's their problem.

Each early ballot will be scanned to count which will take little time. Early vote and vote by mail are announce after close of polls