As Election Day draws near and Americans wait to find out which party will control Congress, officials are warning the results may take a while.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday, “In modern elections, more and more ballots are being cast in early voting and also by mail. And many states don’t start counting those ballots until after the polls close on Nov. 8.”
“We may not know all the winners of elections for a few days. It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner. That’s how this is supposed to work,” she added.
Watch the video below:
Jean-Pierre: "We may not know all the winners of elections for a few days. It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner. That's how this is supposed to work." pic.twitter.com/UPPpMjVCNK
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 7, 2022
Now, despite former President Donald Trump’s claims, there has been no evidence to show that widespread fraud in the 2020 election altered the results.
And there is some merit to what Jean-Pierre said.
In some states, it will take several days to count all the votes. Pennsylvania, for example, does not allow officials to begin counting mail-in votes until Election Day.
So that will add some time to count all the ballots. But hopefully not as long as it took in 2020.
Still, delays in the counting help fuel theories that something nefarious is afoot. That is especially true when voters go to sleep with a candidate ahead and wake up in the morning to find their lead has evaporated.
However, that is simply a symptom of the fact that Republicans tend to vote in person on Election Day, while Democrats have tended to vote by mail and it takes longer to count those ballots.
While such swings in vote tallies do not inherently mean something fishy is going on, it fuels concerns about the process and accuracy of the results, and some conservatives are claiming delays in voting mean there is fraud.
Here’s where Jean-Pierre’s comment is not helpful. She insisted that waiting for days for election results is “how this is supposed to work.” But that does not have to be the case.
The Associated Press notes that in 2020, Florida — for example — had counted 90% of the votes by 9 p.m., even with early and mail-in voting being popular in the state.
So it does not have to take days to count the ballots.
States have had two years to look at what Florida does and improve their process for counting mail-in and early votes.
But unfortunately, they have not learned their lessons from 2020. And so, such theories about fraud will continue to thrive.