That’s what’s on almost everyone’s mind this week: Who will win the 2024 presidential election, and when will we find out?
There’s no clear answer to either question, but history — and inside information shared with The Daily Beast from Kamala Harris’ campaign — suggests we may not have a declared winner for several days, or perhaps weeks, after the polls close Tuesday night.
States will release unofficial results Tuesday evening that news networks and The Associated Press will use to determine winners and call races in most states. However, election officials in the seven battleground states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona — are pleading with voters to be patient, because vote counting will not be complete on Election Day.
Could we see a repeat of 2020?
Four years ago, the Associated Press declared that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump on Saturday, November 7 — four days after polls closed nationwide. The days-long delay in announcing a winner was largely due to Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada.
These three states are likely to have the nation waiting on the brink again, says a chart compiled by the Harris campaign and shared with The Daily Beast. She says Virginia, Ohio, Colorado and Florida will have near-complete election returns by 10 p.m. EST on Election Night, which could be a good gauge of how things will look for either candidate — by a margin of victory — even if those states aren’t expected to flip. .
Harris’ team’s chart then predicts that “most results” from Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan will be on Election Day before midnight, and that Wisconsin will join that list by 6 a.m. EST Wednesday morning. In the same time frame, the campaign expects that Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada will still post only “partial” results.
The campaign indicates that “tens of thousands” of provisional ballots cannot be legally counted until Friday in Pennsylvania, which is overwhelmingly considered the most important swing state for both Trump and Harris.
It’s not just the Harris campaign that warns of a long wait. said Derek Tessler, an expert on election administration and security at the Brennan Center for Justice NPR This week, voters can, at least, “expect a similar timeline” for 2020.
Tesler also noted that, with polls indicating a closer race than four years ago, the winner of the election will likely not be known for “weeks.” He noted that this might happen if the results in a tipping point situation were within a few thousand votes.
What factors might hinder the counting of votes in elections?
Why the long wait? Legal limits on when officials can begin processing mail-in ballots in key states were the main culprit in 2020, with Tesler saying there were no major shifts — with the exception of Michigan — suggesting there will be a dramatic change in the extent to which mail-in ballots can be processed. Voting speed. It will be scheduled this time.
“So when we talk about processing ballots, we’re talking about mail-in voting,” he told NPR. “And it takes longer to count mail-in votes because there are all these steps that election workers need to go through before they can actually count those votes.”
These checks include the need to confirm a voter’s identity and eligibility, as would be done in an in-person voting booth. Mail-in ballot counters will also have to check for damage to the ballot before it is fed into the scanner and counted.
Michigan was proactive in changing a state law that allows it, like most states, to process mail-in ballots before Election Day. But that is not the case in Pennsylvania and Nevada, and delays should be expected.
Arizona law allows mail-in votes to be processed before Election Day, but it includes particularly long ballot processes in this election that are expected to slow things down. The Washington Post Reports indicate that ballots in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, are two pages long this year, which would require opening the voting tabulators and feeding twice as many pages into voting machines, which is more laborious and could lead to an increase in paper jams.
In Nevada, mail ballots without a postmark that arrive by Friday are counted, and those with a postmark are allowed to arrive by Saturday and still be counted. This is in stark contrast to most states, which require mail-in ballots to arrive by Election Day, and could cause significant delays if the election is as close as polls indicate.
The dangers of a long election count
This waiting game could get dangerous if either side — whether voters, partisan media, candidates or their surrogates — tries to fill “this information vacuum by pushing false claims” or prematurely declaring victory, Tesler said.
“Everyone is really desperate to learn anything more about something they have a deep passion for,” he said. “But the problem is that until these votes are actually counted, there is no new information to give these people… and I encourage everyone to be patient. And again, understand the reason we are waiting for the results is that electoral processes are designed to prioritize accuracy and security.”
