How to Survive Election Night – By Nathaniel Persily & Charles Stewart III (Slate) / Oct 21 2020
This year’s election season began weeks ago as more than 80 million voters began receiving their ballots by mail. It continues now, less than two weeks before Nov. 3, with more than 40 million votes already cast. And it is unlikely to end on election night, when the vote totals begin to be released to the public. Voters, campaigns, and the media all need to adjust their expectations to this new reality.
Americans who watch the returns on Nov. 3 need to be prepared for a different type of viewing experience than in the past. More mail ballots may mean slower counting in some states. More importantly, in states that count in-person ballots separately from mail ballots, reported tallies will be more variable as successive batches of ballots are counted and reported.
Media outlets have always toted up the raw election returns as they have been released, warning against reading too much into the early numbers. Such warnings take on greater urgency in 2020. If, as some have predicted, Americans go to bed with President Donald Trump leading and then wake up to learn he is losing, cries of fraud will follow. Those cries may be inevitable given the nature of this race, but the media can give them less ammunition by changing how they communicate with the public about vote counting.
Americans need to be prepared for the possibility of experiencing a roller coaster ride as the votes are counted, especially in the first couple of hours after the polls close. Counties will be reporting partial counts for longer than is typical. At the same time, analysts will be looking for glimpses of solid information about where the election is headed, based on the results from counties that do complete their counts quickly.
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