The United States does not yet have its new president. On the morning after the nail-biting race to the White House on election night, millions of Americans woke up in utter disbelief that the winner had not been declared.
As of now, the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, is behind with 213 electoral votes, while his Democratic challenger Joe Biden leads with 238 electoral votes. Biden is currently ahead in the race to the magic number 270.
Shaking up a storm, Donald Trump said he will go to the Supreme Court to dispute the election count and proclaimed victory over Democratic challenger Joe Biden despite incomplete results from several battle states that could determine the outcome of the race for the White House. Biden’s campaign has said its legal teams are “ready to roll” if Trump goes ahead with his “outrageous” threat to have the Supreme Court stop the election count.
But election results for some battle states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia, were still unclear, and projections from major networks showed that Trump has yet to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win reelection.
But it had become increasingly apparent in the days leading up to November 3 that there might be a delay in declaring the winner. There was also the possibility that Americans did not know who won on election night.
The main factor slowing things down is the fact that millions of Americans voted by mail due to the coronavirus pandemic. And generally, those mail-in ballots take longer to count.
Poll workers must remove the ballots from their envelopes, check for errors, sort and flatten them all before they can go through the scanners as the polls close and are tabulated. In states with well-established vote-by-mail programs, this processing occurs weeks before Election Day. Results are often published quickly.
Without a head start, there is virtually no way to process and count all votes by mail on Election Day, while also counting all votes in person.
In fact, in the history of American elections, all votes are never counted in one day. It is literally impossible to count 150 million votes in a matter of one day. Media organizations, including The Associated Press, declare winners in thousands of races on Election Night based on results, voter polls and other political data. But this year, it is not certain when the American media will have the data to declare the results.
While there is a perfectly logical explanation for why the US doesn’t yet know who the new president will be, Americans who have been waiting with bated breath seem to be losing their patience:
What time do we find out who the president is?
– blake (@blakeps) November 4, 2020
We still don’t know who our president is ???
– kari (@funnkari) November 4, 2020
We’ve never seen shit like this where we wake up and there’s still no president. Lmaoooo now what are we doing people ??
– red (@ Red_Mac6) November 4, 2020
I woke up, late for school, late for breakfast, late even to say good morning to my girl ….. NO PRESIDENT YET
– Kenny Deluxe (@KingKenboi) November 4, 2020
Good morning 🙂 Oh, there is no president yet? It’s okay. We will only engage in a total deathmatch until the strongest victor emerges and is our supreme leader.
– happy holidays (@orcrights) November 4, 2020
So I stood in line to vote for about 2 hours to continue not knowing who the president is. I hope Biden wins, I know I didn’t stay out in the cold for no reason.
– A (@___AJxM) November 4, 2020
According to a CNN report, many election officials ended Tuesday night and halted vote processing in major states like Michigan and Nevada. Some counties in battlefield states like Pennsylvania don’t plan to begin the tabulation process until later Wednesday morning.
(With input from Associated Press)
.
