There is an excellent chance that Americans will go to bed tonight without knowing the winner of the 2020 presidential election — and that is OK. In fact, it is far more normal than you might think.
As NPR notes, official election results have never been completely counted and certified on election night. Each U.S. state has its own deadline for certifying election results, and all of them are after Election Day itself.
The biggest factor that could delay results more than usual this year is that millions of voters cast their ballot by mail — and mailed-in ballots take longer to count than in-person votes.
As the Associated Press explains, some states, including Colorado, have had voting by mail for years, whereas others do not have processes in place to tabulate these ballots ahead of time.
“Election workers must remove the ballots from their envelopes, check for errors, sort them and flatten them — all before they can be run through scanners the moment polls close and be tabulated. In states with well-established vote-by-mail programs, this processing happens weeks before Election Day. The results are often released quickly. But several states did not have this system in place before this year and laws on the books prohibited election officials from processing the ballots well in advance of Election Day. Without a head start, there’s virtually no way to process and count all the mail votes on Election Day, while also counting all the in-person votes.”
These sorts of delays could be especially noticeable in states like North Carolina, California and Texas, which will accept mail-in ballots received after the election so long as they were postmarked by Election Day.
Even though there is an increase in early and mail-in voting, there actually has never been a presidential election where all of the votes were counted on election night. It just isn’t possible.
So why have we known winners on election night before?
Typically, if we have known a winner in the past, it was because media organizations have declared winners based on various data points, including partial vote tallies and exit polls.
When you see the results come in on television or online, keep in mind that what you see is dependent on which areas are being counted first. This may mean that candidates who lead early in the evening may not ultimately win.
In many cases, rural, more Republican areas with fewer ballots to count tend to be tallied first, while urban, more Democratic areas with heavier ballot loads are counted later. Sometimes, however, it goes the other way; in 2016, the earliest vote counts in North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio favored Hillary Clinton, but she ended up losing all three to Donald Trump. These shifts are natural and aren’t "nefarious," experts agree.”
While Election Day 2020 is finally here, it won’t be over until all of the votes are counted and verified. Be patient with the process and be prepared to wait, if needed, to know the final winners.
Here is more information on how to better understand election returns as they come in tonight and over the coming days and weeks:
- Vox: How the press calls elections, explained
- Associated Press: Calling a race is tricky: How AP does it
- Politifact: Be patient on election night 2020: Counting the returns will take time
- Associated Press: The election result may be delayed. That’s OK.
