In the last few days, I have seen many people posting on social media encouraging people to accept the outcome of the elections on Tuesday and on Wednesday to go on with our lives. While their intentions with these posts are undoubtedly pure, the truth is we should not be accepting those results as final on election night. That is not quite how things work. The closing of the polls marks when people can no longer cast their votes. It does not mark the end of the process despite the President's objections. At no time in our country’s history has an election ever officially been determined on election night. Since the advent of television, news agencies have built up election night as an event in which they will project the next President of the United States on live TV for the ratings. In this contentious election, some candidates may even try to claim victory to purposefully sow confusion in the population about the process or might find it politically advantageous to do so in order to sway public opinion. Such actions this year would be irresponsible to democracy. Due to the pandemic, more people have voted by mail, and mail-in ballots take a long time to count due to the amount of cross-checking necessary to ensure the validity of ballots. This process is legally spelled out by each state and is different for each state. This year’s battleground states will take longer. Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania won’t even begin counting ballots until election day. This is all dependent on how the dominoes fall in battleground states. One should note that 48.3% of early voters were Democrats and 41.5% were Republicans. Since mail-in voting will take longer to count, there could very well be a shift as more mail-in votes are counted and in-person votes will be tabulated first. In some states, counting mail-in ballots is done by hand with little to no automation. In extremely close elections (like this one most likely will be) it is important to take the time to do the double and triple-checking necessary to verify votes and to ensure the accuracy of the state's processes. This is the very thing candidates have been demanding. To do so, it will take time and that will be an adjustment for everyone. So what is the timeline? Nothing has to be determined on election night. Election night is just the start of the vote-counting process. In the past, we typically have seen the losing candidate make a phone call to the winning candidate to concede the election. Due to the amount of mail-in votes that will need to be counted this most likely won’t happen. If the election is close, it will most likely be contested. The law states that any election disputes in a state have to be determined by December 8th so that electors from the electoral college can cast their votes on December 14th. The governor must then certify the votes and then send them on to Congress. The new Congress then counts those ballots on January 6th. In a rare case, it could be possible that a governor of a state won't certify the election or the state's legislative body may contest the election. This could cause different counts to be sent from that state to Congress. Congress could choose to throw out the states' votes altogether which has only happened one time in American history (1876). If no one reaches the magic number of 270, then the House of Representatives decides who will be President which has only happened two times in American history. The Senate would then decide the vice president. If a winner has not been determined by inauguration day, then the Speaker of the House would assume the presidency until a winner is determined which has never happened in American history. In 2000, Al Gore had conceded the election. However, when Florida became too close to call, Gore had to withdraw his concession resulting in a 36 day legal battle for the presidency. The point being, there is no guarantee that we will know the next President on election night and those results may take some time. If victory has been declared for a candidate shortly following the election, take a minute to examine these factors before blindly accepting there is a clear winner.
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