Election in America: a long night, or more, before the president is met

EXPLANATOR: There is a strong possibility that Americans will not meet the winner of the American presidential election on the same day, or maybe even the next day.

The main reason? Many states have made it easy to apply for a mail-in ballot amid the coronavirus pandemic and concerns about crowded polling places. But vote-by-mail ballots generally take longer to process than ballots cast in person.

Different states, different approaches

Some US states with extensive experience using mail-in ballots have adjusted for those additional steps.

In Florida, clerks can begin counting ballots 22 days before an election. In North Carolina, beginning five weeks before an election, county boards insert approved ballots into a voting machine, allowing for quick tabulation on Election Day.

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But other states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all with Republican-led legislatures and all of them swinging states, made a conscious decision to wait for mail ballots to not be counted before Election Day. As a result, it could take days to count enough ballots to project a winner.

The dispute in the states over the use of ballots by mail has come as President Donald Trump claims that voting by mail is ripe for fraud.

Election day is not always the deadline

And here’s another thing that could delay the designation of a winner: In some key states, mail-in ballots can arrive several days after Election Day and still be counted, as long as they are postmarked by then. Democrats have argued that the avalanche of absentee votes and slow mail delivery in some areas make that precaution necessary.

For example, vote-by-mail ballots for Nevada voters are not due until November 10 if they are postmarked for Election Day. In North Carolina, mail-in ballots were not due until November 12 if they were postmarked for Election Day.

There will be legal challenges

Polls indicate that the majority of Trump supporters plan to cast their vote on Election Day, while more than half of Joe Biden supporters had planned to vote by mail. Expect the Trump campaign legal team to challenge the validity of many mail-in ballots in critical battlefield states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“We will have a sizeable contingent of attorneys who will be ready to defend themselves against any of the shenanigans that the Democrats are trying,” Tim Murtaugh, Trump’s campaign communications director, told reporters.

Any early signs?

While the election result is unlikely to be known on Wednesday (NZT), the results from two states could indicate where it is headed.

Both Florida and Georgia allow election officials to begin processing ballots weeks before Election Day, allowing for a much faster count. The timeline for calling elections in the two states will likely not be much different than what voters have experienced in the past, unless the elections are simply too close to call. If Biden wins either state, the prospects for a Trump victory are seriously damaged. The same goes for North Carolina.