Americans have come to expect fast and accurate results on election night, ever since The Associated Press started gathering tallies by telegraph in 1848. But the switch to absentee ballots this year could slow things down so it takes a week or more to make accurate calls in some major elections — including, perhaps, the presidency. And we’ve got to prepare for that.
America’s elections administrators have a new imperative amid the coronavirus: Making it safe for voters to cast their ballots. Many more people than usual will seek to vote from home, whether states choose to encourage that or not.
Voting by mail works. The states that have all-mail balloting — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington — count up their ballots relatively fast and conduct elections that are accurate, accessible, safe and secure. Even the Heritage Foundation’s voter-fraud database contains only 13 instances of absentee voter fraud — indeed, only 44 instances of any kind of voter fraud — across those five states.
Other states scrambling to handle enormous numbers of absentee ballots can follow their lead. They need to start now to purchase necessary equipment and supplies and to begin educating their voters and staff on how the system will work. And election administrators will need to plan for sufficient time and space for safe, in-person voting for those who choose that option. This is urgent, and Congress should assist by providing the necessary funding.
These new states will be able to meet the current standards for safe, secure and accurate elections, but it’s unlikely they’ll be as fast as other states well versed in this system. Switching over to a substantially mail-based voting system in a matter of months will almost certainly bring delays in counting those many new millions of absentee ballots, particularly if administrators are not empowered to start tallying them until the end of Election Day. So we’ll have to wait.
Fortunately, time is built into the system, even for the presidential race. There’s no requirement that a presidential race be called on election night, or even in November. This year, federal law sets Dec. 8 as the deadline to determine which presidential candidate has won each state, 35 days after Election Day.
As it happens, America has had to be patient before.
The elections of 1800 and 1824 were so convoluted they had to be resolved by “contingent elections” held in the House of Representatives. As a result, the winner in each race, Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, wasn’t determined until February of the following year.
The election of 1876 took even longer because of irregularities in the returns of several states. A congressional election commission was formed in late January 1877, deliberated all the way through February, and finally awarded the presidency to Rutherford B. Hayes in early March, just days before Inauguration Day.
To be sure, the long waits of the 19th century were much less common in later campaigns (especially after the inauguration date moved from March to January), but it still took a while to call some races. Several famously close races — in 1948, 1960 and 2004, for instance — weren’t decided until a day after Election Day. Most notably, the contested election of 2000 stretched into mid-December before the Supreme Court, in Bush v. Gore, cemented Florida’s vote certification in place, which handed the presidency to George W. Bush.
While historical examples abound, we have seen a model of patience and restraint just this year.
Wisconsin’s election in April, in many ways a fiasco, offers a positive lesson in how to deal with a long count. It took six days for election officials to tally up the 1.1 million absentee ballots cast (a state-record-shattering 72 percent of all ballots). The results did not leak during the counting phase, and when they emerged, there was a major surprise: Supreme Court challenger Jill Karofsky decisively defeated Justice Daniel Kelly, the heavily favored incumbent. But Justice Kelly graciously accepted the upset and the delay. In conceding, he said, “Here in America the lawful will of the people shall always prevail.”
We certainly hope so.
This year, we should prepare for the strong possibility that the price we pay to protect the health of our people and our democracy is a long wait after Election Day. Taking the time for an accurate count will enhance the legitimacy of the election, not undermine it. Our people deserve it. Our democracy demands it.
Ellen L. Weintraub (@EllenLWeintraub) is a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission. Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) is a professor of history at Princeton and co-author of “Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974.”
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