In recent decades, aside from a few notable exceptions, Americans have come to expect speedy election results, with TV news anchors calling the results live on the air just hours after the polls close. But increasingly, experts are warning that it may not be clear who's won the 2020 presidential race for some time after voters have finished casting their ballots. Citizens should prepare "for 'Election Night' to actually be 'Election Week(s),'" the National Task Force on Election Crises stresses.
Below, why—like so many things in 2020—this year's election will look different.
The newscaster calls on election night have always been a little misleading.
Although historically data experts have been able to project the winner in each state, and then add up those forecasted electoral votes to "call" the winner, national elections have always been a weeks-long process. It always takes time for states to ensure that every vote is counted and to certify their elections.
"From a legal perspective, there are no results on Election Night, and there never have been," Ohio State law professor Edward Foley recently explained in the Atlantic. "The only thing that has ever existed on Election Night are projected results that the media has helpfully provided to its audiences."
There's been a massive increase in mail-in voting.
Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, voters are opting to mail their ballots rather than casting them in-person, in the hopes of minimizing possible exposure to the virus. This year's primaries offer a preview of this shift: 50.3% of votes were cast by mail, as opposed to 27.4% in the 2018 midterms, according to Pew.
Mail-in votes require more time to process—an effect that may be particularly pronounced in states that have only recently opened up absentee voting due to the pandemic. In addition, in some places, including crucial swing states like Pennsylvania, mail ballots can't be counted until November 3; and many states will accept ballots after election if they're postmarked on Election Day, lengthening the time required to get a final count.
The deadline for ballot arrival varies widely, from November 2 (yes, Louisiana requires ballots to arrive before Election Day), to November 20 (that's Washington with the most generous timeline). Additionally, about 30 states allow voters to fix errors on mail-in ballots that would otherwise lead to their votes being thrown out, and some require those who requested mail ballots but voted in-person to cast provisional ballots, which are reviewed on, or often after, Election Day.
Exit polls will also look different this year.
Election Day exit polls, which broadcasters—including ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN, who all back Edison Media Research, an exit polling consortium—use to inform election calls, will also be affected by COVID-19.
A larger portion of the electorate is voting early this year, meaning there will be fewer people to poll on Election Day. As of October 29, more than 28 million people had voted early in-person; combined with the figures for mail-in ballots received thus far, 58.1% of the total votes cast in 2016 have already been submitted, per the U.S. Elections Project.
Also, voters who do go to polling stations on Election Day may be particularly wary of interacting with strangers amid a pandemic—despite new social distancing and sanitization procedures, which ABC says "were tested successfully during the recent primaries."
Close calls could lead to legal battles, further delaying final counts.
As the country infamously saw during the 2000 election, when the results are close, recounts can be called, which can lead to complicated legal battles where things can get messy.
Already, the judicial branch has been involved in the electoral process: the Supreme Court has been issuing decisions that will affect how the election will proceed in certain states, including in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Florida.
If the election ultimately ends up before the Supreme Court, as it did in Bush v. Gore, it could be particularly contentious. The court's newest Justice, Amy Coney Barrett, was just confirmed by Senate Republicans in a rushed process, after over 60 million voters had already begun casting their ballots—and her highly conservative jurisprudence and ties to Trump, as his hand-picked nominee, could cause Democrats to doubt her impartiality.
Trump has yet to commit to accepting the election results.
Peaceful transfers of power have long been a hallmark and point of pride for the U.S., but the current President has repeatedly refrained from declaring that he would accept the outcome of the 2020 race. He has also repeatedly cast doubt on the mail-in voting process, and encouraged his supporters to keep an eye on in-person voting, as self-appointed poll-watchers of sorts.
It's particularly worrying because as more votes are tallied, the final results tend to skew more Democratic. This well-documented phenomenon is known as the "blue shift," and its causes are not well understood, though some suggest that it's related to provisional ballots, which are often counted later in the tallying process. Said provisional ballots are disproportionately likely to be cast by young, nonwhite, and transient voters, all of whom are more likely to vote Democratic, as David Graham lays out in the Atlantic.
This could set the stage for an artificial early Republican lead, which could in turn offer an opportunity for conservatives to falsely declare Trump the winner.
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