By Chris Satullo
I was playing golf one day this year with a friend who’s active in politics. Before hitting his drive on the 12th hole (striped, 210 down the middle), he looked up from his ball and said, “You know what else worries me? I don’t think we’ll be able to count all the ballots on Election Night.”
“So what,” I said, after he’d finished his sweet swing.
“What do you mean?” he said, putting his club back in his bag and tenderly slipping his prized Yoda head cover over it.
“I mean … so what,” I replied. “What difference does it make whether they count all the ballots Election Night?”
“Well, we might not know who won.”
“So what.” I continued my obstinate version of the old Toyota management exercise known as the Five Whys.
“Well, you journalists wouldn’t be able to tell people who the winners were.”
“So what. We’ll live. Where is it written in the Constitution that the American people have to know who won the presidency before they tuck in on Election Night? Why do we turn our democracy upside down just so a TV network can trot out some dumb-ass hologram to tell you who won Wisconsin – before the people in California are even done voting?
“You know, if it weren’t for the networks’ unholy need for speed in calling Florida for W. in 2000, he might never have been named president. That’s what lent him the status as the apparent winner and made Al Gore look like a sore loser trying to usurp. And to this day, we still don’t really know who won Florida. Just think – if there’s no antsy Election Night call by the Decision Desk, then there’s no Iraq War, no Abu Ghraib, no Katrina bungle. Let’s not call it on Election Night; let’s just get the count right.”
My friend opened his mouth, then paused in a way that let me dream that I’d won the argument. He then proceeded to win the hole, his par to my double bogey.
Out on the course, I was hyping my case a bit for fun, but I truly do believe the core assertion: We do not need and should not demand to know the winner on Election Night – particularly if that impatience might interfere with anyone’s motivation to vote or, even worse, with the prospects for a fair and accurate count. (Hey, if a landslide makes the point moot, fine – but only then.)
This coming Nov. 3, thanks to the coronavirus, a premature call of the presidential winner may actually be low on our list of Election Day concerns.
Why? Because to prevent voting from being fatal, two-thirds of states are now encouraging voting from home by mail, no excuses needed. This will swell mail-in ballots to unprecedented levels; they were at 23.6 percent in 2016. (Despite my pre-pandemic harrumphing about the pitfalls of early voting, I must concede this is a good and proper thing in a pandemic year.)
The good news is that voting from home will protect the franchise for millions of people. A side bonus: It will also complicate the TV networks’ efforts to do accurate Election Day exit polling. And this, Lord willing, may force them to be more cautious about calling swing states for either candidate.
The less good news is that mail-in ballots take longer to verify and count than votes cast on machines; that’s why it just took a full week to learn the winner of Kentucky’s Democratic Senate primary. What’s more, in some places the law doesn’t allow mail ballots to be counted until Election Day.
Local election officials in many jurisdictions around the U.S. just are not prepared to handle the coming mail-ballot deluge smoothly, swiftly or, in some places, even accurately.
So, the last thing we want would be for our anxiety and impatience to compound the problem by imposing artificially early deadlines on these outgunned, understaffed and sadly, in many cases, marginally competent bureaucrats.
Give them all the time they need to get this momentous tally as correct as humanly possible.
So repeat after me: We may not know who won the presidency until a week after Election Day – maybe even longer. And that’s OK. Let’s get the count right.
Drill this concept into your head: We may not know who won the presidency until a week after Election Day – maybe even longer. And that’s OK. Let’s get the count right.
Pass it down the line, whisper it along the alley, shout it from the rooftops: We may not know who won the presidency until a week after Election Day – maybe even longer. And that’s OK.
If someone asks you if you’d like a gin-and-tonic out on the deck, reply: “Hey, did you know we may not know who won the presidency until a week after Election Day – maybe even longer. And that’s OK.”
If the car salesman asks whether you might really want to take that test drive in this beauty with the luxury trim line, tell him, “Maybe, but did you realize we may not know who won the presidency until a week after Election Day – maybe even longer. And I’m fine with that. Just get it right.“
It’s vital that, between now and Election Day, we train as many voters as possible to regard a vote count that lasts a week or more as natural, expected and fully in the order of things.
Why? Well, first, because millions will otherwise melt into puddles of anxiety and paranoia if the delay does drag on.
Second, and more important, the longer the count continues, the more wildly and loudly the likely loser, a certain orange-haired incumbent, will spew excremental tweetstorms full of ellipses, fantastic claims, exclamation points, false anecdotes about fraud, ALL CAPS WORDS, baseless accusations, misspelled state names, and dangerous threats of armed revolt.
His remnant of true believers, the last captives of this gaslit presidency’s Upside Down World, will believe him no matter what.
But it’s important that the rest of his erstwhile supporters, the ones who’ve been flowing to the Biden camp in the last two months, get conditioned to view any delays in the final call as What Was Expected, not a sign of dastardly deeds, as What Is Proper and Required in a pandemic-year election … not THE BIGGEST SCANDLE IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA!!!!!!!
Of course, Donald J. Trump won’t save his assault on the integrity of democracy only for after the polls close. He’s already at it; has been for years. That’s why it’s important, now, to drum the truthful counter-message – We may not know for a week and that’s OK – into people’s heads.
For those of us who have escaped the Upside Down (hat tip to Stranger Things), the keen irony of Trump’s fulminations is this: The most elaborate organized cheating we’re likely to see this fall will be the Republicans’ usual voter suppression schemes – poll closings and mysterious voting machine failures in Democratic wards, phony voter purges, dirty tricks designed to fool or intimidate likely D voters into not casting a valid ballot.
If you’re ever in the company of someone who launches into a Trump-inspired tirade about Democratic fraud, ask them this simple question:
Just as a matter of common sense, who is going to be more motivated to cheat and scheme and lie their way through this election – the team that’s up 14 points in the polls, or the team that’s staring a humiliating landslide loss in the face?
Happy Independence Day. Let this be the first one of a new era in our history when we truly uphold the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration’s opening words for all of us, not just some of us.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia.