We Have Never Had Final Results on Election Day (NYT)

[eppur_se_muova]

President Trump has been trying to pre-emptively delegitimize ballots counted after Nov. 3. But states have always counted past election night.

By Maggie Astor
Nov. 1, 2020

For weeks, President Trump and his allies have been laying groundwork to challenge the results of the election if he loses. Now, in the final days of the campaign, he has settled on a blatantly ahistorical closing argument: that the votes in a fair election should not be counted past election night.

“The Election should end on November 3rd., not weeks later!” he tweeted on Friday, two days after telling reporters in Nevada, “Hopefully, the few states remaining that want to take a lot of time after Nov. 3 to count ballots, that won’t be allowed by the various courts.”

“You would think you want to have the votes counted, tabulated, finished by the evening of Nov. 3,” he said at a campaign event a week earlier.

In reality, the scenario Mr. Trump is outlining — every vote in a modern election being “counted, tabulated, finished” by midnight — is not possible and never has been. No state ever reports final results on election night, and no state is legally expected to.
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If, as Mr. Trump suggested, courts were to force states to stop counting after Nov. 3, it would be an extraordinary subversion of the electoral process and would disenfranchise millions of voters who cast valid, on-time ballots.
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more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/us/politics/trump-ballot-counting-election.html




Yeah, I know, someone's probably posted this already -- but we need to spread this simple, basic, factual info far and wide.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. Trump was declared the projected winner in 2016...

The day after was a dark day.

[getagrip_already]

3. Not the same thing as being declared the winner ....

Those were merely network calls. Votes continued to be counted for weeks in some cases.

What the networks "project" is not an official count, and never has been. It is entertainment. Period.

[samnsara]

2. years ago i was driving to the polls to vote at 4 pm Pacific time..and i heard the winner..

...declared on the radio before I even voted. I think it was Clinton... Anyway I still voted.

[getagrip_already]

4. and votes continued to be counted for days or weeks....

Network projections are meaningless to the vote count and the state by state declarations.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Maybe Reagan? This got a lot of people PO'd at the networks, and they quit doing it.

Now winners are not projected until West coast polls have closed.