"The jumble of election rules and deadlines by state, including in presidential battlegrounds like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all but ensure that the victor in a close race won’t be known on Nov. 3." https://t.co/mR6gl2TchO— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) June 25, 2020
Sure it's fun to stay up late and track the results as they come in (unless they come in against you, and then you curse and try not to throw something at the TeeVee and go to bed early and don't sleep well. Ah, yes, I remember 2016 well.)
But it used to be we didn't know election results for days. Indeed, the Bush v Gore debacle was the grossest manipulation of the press I've ever seen. The "Brooks Brothers" riot, the insistence by people paid to talk to TV cameras that the nation "HAD TO KNOW" who the President was "RIGHT NOW!!!!!", while most of us were content to let Florida get on with it, and trusted the ordinary ballot counters to do right by us all. It was the nervousness of the media, played like a fiddle by Jim Baker and Co., that made the Supreme Court jump like a bug on a griddle and reach a completely indefensible and unnecessary result (when they should have tossed the case out as asking too much judicial interference in matters of democracy inaction).
I really don't care how soon I know who the POTUS is in 2021, as long as we find out by January 20, 2021. Any sooner than that is just lagniappe, as far as I'm concerned.
Trump can scream until he's blue in the face that he's won re-election, but until the ballots are counted and the electors vote, he hasn't. If he disagrees, he's got the backing of roughly the number of people who went to see him in Tulsa, or Phoenix, or the yahoos who stood on sidewalks demanding the country "reopen" and getting all the attention because of guns. And aren't we glad our elected officials listened to them, huh?
I say let government takes its own sweet 18th century time. We can wait. Better to be accurate than early.
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