Will there be clarity or chaos this election night? It’s another 2020 cliffhanger.
The issue this year: With COVID-19 driving so many people to vote early or with mail-in-ballots, the systems for counting the votes will be strained.
That’s in part because states have never processed the sheer volume of ballots projected to arrive before Election Day. It’s also because a patchwork of odd state voting rules could lead to challenges over each ballot.
Some of the local quirks: In Missouri, voters are required to get their mail-in ballot notarized. In South Carolina, the voter must swear an oath and the oath must be observed by a witness who signs the return envelope. In Pennsylvania, each ballot must be placed in a secrecy envelope. In Kentucky, that secrecy envelope has to be signed.
With lawyers on both sides monitoring the counts closely, officials are under extreme pressure to validate that each ballot is eligible and executed correctly. You can just imagine how long this process could take.
But that’s not all.
Rules for counting early votes vary state by state.
In the key battleground state of Florida, state law allows officials to process mail-in ballots weeks ahead of Election Day. Early in-person votes are tallied electronically. If all goes as planned, those totals should be ready to combine with the same-day vote totals after the polls close on Nov. 3.
In a role reversal, Florida could be among the states with the clearest and fastest vote totals. We could know who wins Florida early on election night.
Arizona is also set up to process ballots quickly and report totals fast.
But in Wisconsin, local clerks count the votes. They cannot start opening and counting ballots until Election Day. In Michigan, they can start counting a few hours before the polls open on Nov. 3, which means the totals could trickle in.
In North Carolina and Pennsylvania, mail-in ballots that are post marked before Election Day but arrive a predetermined number of days later, can be counted, which drags out the process further.
If the same-day vote is close, we’ll have to wait for the mail-in ballots to be processed before we know the winner.
Wise observers will look to the early counting battleground states – Florida, Ohio, and Arizona – to glean whether we’ll have an early decision election night.
If not, we’ll have to exhibit patience with a period of indecision, with lawyers getting involved on both sides.
Expect some hiccups. After all, it is 2020.
