With a record number of mail-in ballots, a Postal Service in disarray and herds of lawyers waiting in the wings, the outlook for a clean winner on Election Night is far from certain.
that a"system that's fair" will only happen if"we know who the president of the United States is on election night.""This president is obviously going to play whatever games are available to him to try to cloud the results of this election," Sen.
Chris Murphy toldRepublicans on Capitol Hill, similar to their Democratic colleagues, are wary of what a delayed election result could mean. After all, Hillary Clinton has said Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden should not concede on election night"under any circumstances." Understandably, Republicans are more concerned about vote-by-mail ballots being accurately and efficiently counted than they are of a preemptive Trump victory declaration. Some would prefer that vote-by-mail deadlines be moved up in order to receive the ballots well ahead of Election Day. "Ideally, I think one of the recommendations is that people put deadlines for submission of ballots like a week or two beforehand," Sen. Bill Cassidy toldThe U.S. Postal Office has become hamstrung with major delivery delays in recent months. Democrats have alleged that the operational changes made by Postmaster Louis DeJoy, a major contributor to the Trump campaign and a Trump appointee, were designed to cripple the agency ahead of an election in whichThe disabling and/or removal of more than 600 high-speed mail-sorting machines nationwide could. Additionally, more than half a million mail-in ballots in primary elections around the country this year were disqualified due to missed deadlines or ballot errors. "Look at how screwed up some of these elections have already been because of the dramatic increase in mail-in ballots," Sen. Ron Johnson said."It's not that the Post Office can't deliver them. It's that the election officials have deadlines that do not recognize the reality of the situation. They still have deadlines based on a mail-in ballot level that really can be ignored.". Most states—29 of them, including the battlegrounds of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—require that ballots must be received by Election Day. But even in those states, the specific deadline time on Election Day varies widely. Florida, for instance, requires the ballot be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day, while states like Pennsylvania will accept them until 8 p.m. Two states—Louisiana and Mississippi—mandate that mail-in ballots be received one day prior to the election. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia, including the battlegrounds of North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia, require a postmark by Election Day, and the deadline for the receipt of the ballot by election officials runs from one to 17 days after the election. Judge Robert Rosenberg of the Broward County Canvassing Board uses a magnifying glass to examine a dimpled chad on a punch card ballot November 24, 2000 during a vote recount in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. On May 4, 2001, the Florida state legislature overwhelmingly passed a voting reform act designed to eliminate the controversial punch card ballots which were the focal point of recount efforts in the 2000 presidential election.Senator Mike Rounds pointed to the"red mirage" projection for exactly why other states should take after his. "Get it in in a reasonable length of time so that it does get there by Election Day," the South Dakota Republican said."That eliminates that possibility." Though Republican voters typically dominate voting by mail, Democrats this cycle stand to have the advantage. Trump has repeatedly, without evidence, tried to discredit casting ballots by mail—a voting method that he himself uses and which does not succumb to widespread fraud. His flurry of attacks against the age-old voting method have prompted pleas from GOP officials across the country to cease the inaccurate rhetoric out of fear of alienating Republican mail-in voters, many of whom are older and may also forgo in-person voting amid a pandemic.
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