To be honest, CA has enacted election laws about handling of absentee ballots that provide ample opportunity for the exact type of abuse discovered in North Carolina. So far, no such plot has been discovered, but that loophole needs to be closed.
The reason it takes so long for votes to be counted in this state is because CA allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are post-marked by election day, and received by the Friday after election day. A huge number of people do just that: mail in their ballots, some before election day but many on election day. More people mail in their ballots in CA than the number of people who actually vote in person...