Election 2020
Election Night Results Will Be Delayed
This year, counting the votes will be a logistical nightmare.
While Election Day cannot be delayed thanks to Article II of the Constitution vesting that power to Congress, another consideration seems to be lurking in the shadows. Unless there is a landslide victory by either presidential candidate, it is likely that no watch party in America will be celebrating on the night of November 3rd.
If we examine races from earlier this year, the pandemic’s ability to slow down the vote counting process is already evident. The tight primary in Kentucky between Charles Booker and Amy McGrath was among the closely watched races on June 23rd of this year, but the winner was not declared until days afterwards with McGrath coming out on top by roughly 3 points.
In New York City, the primary race between Jamaal Bowman and Rep. Eliot Engel was not officially called for almost a month due to the record number of mail-in voting that had to be processed. Although Jamaal Bowman declared victory a few days after the election due to a large lead, the Associated Press and the State of New York waited for most of the ballots to be counted.
The pandemic has affected the way states conduct their elections in two profound ways. First, the number of polling places will be considerably lower, especially in urban areas, than in previous elections. In the Kentucky primary, there were roughly 170 polling locations statewide with only 1 polling location in Jefferson County which includes the state’s largest city of Louisville. In an effort to curb the spread of the virus, polling locations can be expected to be less numerous in most states, not just Kentucky.
Second, and more importantly, the number of mail-in ballots will be exponentially higher as state governments ramp up their absentee mail-in voting systems and outreach. The reason for this process taking so long is a simple one: Each board of elections in every county and state must physically open and process a record number of ballots. When election boards open up the ballots, they must match the recorded information provided by the voter (with identification requirements varying by state) with the information present in their system. Once the voter is verified, then the counting begins for each contest. There simply isn’t a way to do this quickly.
Some races will take longer than others, and it seems that the race for the presidency will take, at the very least, a few days to confidently declare a winner. This process goes against the sensational and flashy nature of electoral politics for many Americans, but the length of the counting is evidence that the process is working, not broken.
The media is also conditioned to bring the public the winners of elections quickly in an effort to break the story first, but in contests where it truly is too close to call, the media will be treading lightly. The American public would certainly not appreciate the media declaring either Joe Biden or Donald Trump the winner and then having the backtrack due to more mail-in votes closing the gap.
What this election will exemplify more than ever is how decentralized the American system of elections is with thousands of underfunded election boards taking on a massive logistical task. The slow election results in Kentucky and New York were only for Congress, and this November we will be combining these voting blocs from all 50 states into one unified tally.
As a result, patience will be a virtue heading into the election this fall.
