October 21, 2024

Heartache Tonight

So, as the clock nears midnight (Eastern Time) on November 5th, we should know whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump is going to be inaugurated as our new president on January 20, right? Or at the very least, by 7 AM the next morning, right? And then this whole election season will be over, RIGHT??

Potentially not, I’m sorry to say.

Depending on the number of mail-in ballots cast in some states — and how close things are in others, it could take most of the week for us to solidly know who wins the election. Back in 2020, it took CNN four days to settle on Joe Biden as the winner. Looking back even farther? It took more than a month for the Supreme Court to settle the George W. Bush vs. Al Gore contest.

Desperado

As a counterpoint, in 2016, while things were still relatively close in some states on the day after Election Day, Hillary Clinton conceded to Trump. But given his reaction to the 2020 election, it is extremely unlikely that Trump will concede at any point this year, regardless of how the numbers pan out. In fact, the Trump campaign has already laid the groundwork for numerous legal challenges, particularly in swing states like Pennsylvania, if things don’t go his way.

Harris, for her part, has emphasized the importance of a peaceful transfer of power, so if the numbers really don’t go her way, expect a similar concession as Clinton’s in 2016. That being said, in the event of a very close result in which Harris trails, don’t expect the Democrats to just roll over.

I Can’t Tell You Why

Well, actually, I can. One of the biggest complaints that the Trump campaign had in 2020 (and one that they continue to tout as “evidence” of cheating) was the so-called “Red Mirage”. As background, remember that this was during the height of the Covid pandemic, and a lot of people were still trying to figure out how best to vote without potentially coming into contact with other people. A lot of states expanded their absentee and mail-in voting programs to allow people to vote remotely. But given the unexpected politicization of other similar anti-Covid programs, these efforts in voting accommodations got bashed by Republicans, who claimed that they were allowing the Democrats to cheat by stuffing ballot boxes, or sending in thousands of false votes to change the results. (Please note that every single claim of these “cheating efforts” has been debunked.)

That brings us to the Red Mirage itself. In a lot of states that allowed mail-in voting, Republicans showed up to vote in person on Election Day, while Democrats mailed in their ballots. This resulted in organizations who did the traditional exit polling — where they talk to people who are leaving the polls — talking to a lot of Republicans, and not nearly as many Democrats, so their results earlier in the evening made it look like there was a strong Republican push. However, once poll workers started to process mailed-in and absentee ballots, and began reporting those numbers, the numbers started turning blue at (to some) an astonishing rate. There was no chicanery or falsification of numbers — just an artificial “pre-sorting” of votes into Red and Blue ones based on how they were counted.

Take It Easy

While the worst of the Covid pandemic is over, many states continue to allow more mail-in and absentee voting than in 2016 and before. And Republicans this year have made a much stronger effort to embrace voting early in all its forms — except for Trump himself, though, who will haphazardly criticize it or advocate for it, sometimes even in the same speech.

Regardless, keep in mind that, while it might take time for a definitive answer to be reached, chances are very likely that one will. A repeat of 2000’s month-long examination of “hanging chads” in Florida is highly unlikely. Still, regardless of how long it takes, the only thing that the majority of the citizenry can do during that time is to take it easy and know that one of these nights, we’ll learn whether one candidate or the other’s work was just wasted time.