Election results won't be finalized for days no matter what Trump says
Despite Trump’s claims, most states will take days to weeks to finalize their ballot counts.
In an ad set to be released Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor cautioned that voters shouldn’t expect definitive results on election night.
“These are unprecedented times. Because of the coronavirus, there were millions of votes cast by mail so it may take longer than usual to count every vote,” Gov. Tom Wolf says in the ad. “The folks in our election offices — your neighbors, family, and friends, are working hard ensuring every single vote is counted,” he added.
He assured voters that their ballots will count, even if it takes a few days to tally them.
“So it may take a little longer than we’re used to, even a few days, but that’s okay,” he continues, “because it’s critical that your vote is counted — and it will be.”
The ad is meant to allay fears that Republicans, led by Trump, will declare a premature victory on election night, if Trump is ahead in the polls.
Axios reports that in recent weeks, Trump has floated declaring victory on election night if he holds a lead over Biden. Trump denied the report Sunday, but nevertheless griped about states taking a few days to ensure the integrity of the election. “I think it’s a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election. I think it’s a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over.”
“I think it’s terrible that we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election. … We’re going to go in the night of, as soon as that election’s over, we’re going in with our lawyers.”
He also singled out Pennsylvania, a key swing stated where Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads Trump by 5 points.
“We don’t want to have Pennsylvania, where you have a political governor, a very partisan guy. … We don’t want to be in a position where he’s allowed, every day, to watch ballots come in,” he said. “See if we can only find 10,000 more ballots.”
The mail-in vote is expected to substantially exceed 2016 levels, with Democrats embracing the method — disparaged by Trump as voter fraud — and Republican voters lagging behind.
“His voters have clearly listened to his call to avoid mail voting, and many of them are waiting for that Election Day experience to go out there,” Tom Bonier, CEO of TargetSmart which tracked early voting, told USA Today. “Because of what we’ve seen with the early vote – Democrats are reaching record levels of turnout – Republicans are going to need to do something similar on Election Day. They’re going to need to vote in numbers of the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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