Everyone knows what a presidential election night feels like: The candidates and their families watch returns somewhere, usually their hometown, ahead of what will be either a big victory rally or a somber concession speech. Cable news is full of maps and whiteboards and vote counts, and we find out who won. But if the pandemic extends into the fall, as many experts consider likely, all that will change. HuffPost senior reporter Paul Blumenthal explains the lurking dangers of not getting a quick winner on election night.
OK, set the scene for us. It's election night in November. Why might we not have any clear results about who won the presidential election? How long might it take?
Nearly every state is anticipating unprecedented levels of votes cast by mail. The move to mail-voting, particularly without enough funding, could delay final vote reporting by days, if not weeks.
The delayed counting of some votes cast by mail will be an issue in each of the swing states that election analysts anticipate will decide the election — Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These states all allow voters to cast their ballots by mail without an excuse, while some do not allow these ballots to be counted until Election Day or even election night.
There are a range of reasons why votes cast by mail will be harder to count on Election Day than in-person votes. First, ballots can be returned up to the close of polls on Election Day. There is, or there is expected to be, litigation pushing states to allow votes cast by mail to count so long as they are postmarked on Election Day and received up to three days later. So, those votes simply won’t be available to be counted until after Election Day. Second, a state like Pennsylvania does not allow election officials to open and count mailed ballots until the close of polls on election night. It takes longer to count these ballots as the signatures on them must be checked with signatures on file to ensure no fraud was committed. Third, most states and counties have not budgeted enough money to hire staff and buy equipment necessary to process a surge in mailed ballots. This will be made even more acute of a problem by the budgetary damage inflicted on states by the coronavirus pandemic.
Explain how this uncertainty cuts pretty hard against cable news's coverage instincts.
I would refer everyone to go back and watch CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer’s Iowa Caucus night election commentary to understand the urgent need television news has for election results on its biggest nights. Here is a good summary of his reaction.
For election night, it’s not really about which channel or reporter gets the story first. The press already burned themselves hard on that front on election night in 2000 by accidentally calling Florida for Al Gore, then accidentally calling the election for George W. Bush before finally calling it too close to call. Since 2000, networks, newspapers and other news sources have been much less hasty to be the first ones to call an election, for fear of creating a premature impression among the public of the winner.
It is really about election night programming as a show — a spectacle — that demands a culmination. The manic energy exuding from election night coverage on cable news is the same as the buildup before an EDM drop. Reporters and television news personalities have spent all year leading up to this moment. The results must drop, now!
Of course, I don’t just put this pressure to know what the voters have decided all on television, or the press writ large. This is what the voters (aka the viewers) demand as well.
It seems likely Trump and the GOP will be tempted to paint the delays as fraud. Has that happened before?
Trump refuses to accept the results of the 2016 election that he won. He still to this day falsely claims that he would have won the popular vote save for millions of illegal votes cast. There is zero evidence to not only substantiate his claims, but to even prop up the allegation of a conspiracy. Voter fraud is rare, but that hasn’t stopped Trump, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan or House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy from either explicitly alleging voter fraud or speculating about it being committed by Democrats. Again, there is no evidence to back this up at all. Unfortunately, there is an entire partisan media ecosystem devoted to lying about voter fraud.
What can the political system do to head off this looming disaster?
A group of election law, technology and media experts led by University of California, Irvine professor Rick Hasen released a comprehensive list of recommendations for just this purpose. These include the press properly calibrating public expectations that final results are unlikely to be determined on election night and explaining the actual reasons why votes cast by mail may take longer to count without feeding conspiracy theories of voter fraud, particularly when they are leveled by known liars like the president.
Another thing that states could do individually, or in concert, is to decline to report any vote totals until all ballots have been received and are ready to be counted. This is what Wisconsin did for its controversial April 7 election. A federal court ordered the state to not report any results until April 13. This prevented the election day vote tally from shifting wildly in the following days as mail and provisional votes were verified or came in through the mail in the three days allowed post-election day. These post-election day vote fluctuations can confuse voters who do not understand why votes are still being counted. That confusion is used by malicious actors, including President Trump, to make false fraud accusations. And those accusations undermine public faith in the democratic process.
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