Agree. Looking at Tulsa County which has very few areas I would consider rural, Trump won by 15% compared to 34% statewide. I believe parts of the OKC area were even closer than that.
On a different note, how in 2024 can California only have 58% of the vote counted 3 days after the election? It takes Florida 3 hours to count 98%.
Differences in philosophy.
After 2000, Florida received considerable federal funding related to vote tabulation and improving the efficiency of voting. A two hour line to vote in Philly is a hassle. In Miami heat, with all its retirees, it literally kills people. Used to happen all the time. And still does sparingly.
So Florida has scanning technology that is the best in the country and legal infrastructure to support it. So lines are short.
People want to vote in person because it takes less than five minutes and there’s plenty of early voting locations.
California emphasizes a variety of methods to vote with the philosophy of the more options to vote, the more people will vote.
Because of infrastructure issues in CA like poor parking and extended commutes to and from work, CA voting by mail has increased rapidly the last thirty years and the laws and tech haven’t kept up.
For instance, unlike other states, Florida can process received mail in ballots as they arrive. They just can’t tabulate them. They can do all the things you need to do to verify that the vote should be counted, load it into the machine, and scan it. They just can’t tabulate. CA cannot do any of that. They start from scratch on election night and still count by hand in some smaller jurisdictions.
Florida law requires every mailed ballot arrive by the cob on Election Day regardless of when postmarked. CA requires it to be post marked by election day. Which means they must wait at least five days and sometimes longer if the post office tells them, to be certain every vote has arrived.
Mail in ballots hand delivered on Election Day, which is common, can’t be counted until the end of the day. And again, not every county has Florida’s scan technology so it can take days for CA officials to profile such a massive rush of mail in ballots, count them and certify the results.
I could go on.