2024 US Election: Why is Donald Trump’s call for a quick win in the presidential race on the night of November 5 unlikely?

US Election 2024 news: Former President Donald Trump increases his demands for election winner presidential race It will be announced shortly after polls close on Tuesday, well before all the votes are counted.

Trump set this pattern in 2020 by announcing his win in the early morning hours after Election Day. This led his allies to demand that authorities “stop the counting”. He and many other conservatives have spent the last four years claiming fraud cost him this election and complaining about how long vote counting is taking in the United States.

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But one of the many reasons we don’t know the winner quickly on election night is that Republican lawmakers in two key states refuse to change laws that delay the counting. Another is that most indications are that this will be a very close election, and that it will take longer than big blowouts to determine who wins close elections.

As a result, election experts state that the priority in vote counting is not to end the tension after the polls close, but to ensure an accurate and safe count.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The time delay is to preserve the integrity of the process.”

Trump’s request also does not appear to take into account six time zones from the East Coast to Hawaii.

David Becker, an election expert and co-author of “The Big Truth,” a book debunking Trump’s 2020 election lies, said it is unrealistic for election officials in thousands of jurisdictions to “instantly snap their fingers and count 160 million multi-page ballots containing dozens of votes.” There are races on them.

Trump wants the race to be decided on Tuesday night

During a rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday, Trump demanded that the race be decided immediately after some polls began closing.

“These need to be decided by 9, 10, 11 o’clock Tuesday night,” Trump said. “A lot of dishonest people. These are crooked people.”

It was not clear who he was targeting with the phrase “crooked people”.

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The timing is an example of why Trump’s demands do not match the reality of an election in the United States. As of 11 p.m. Eastern time, polls will be closing in Arizona and Nevada, two swing states in the West.

Trump has led conservatives to complain that the United States is not counting elections as quickly as France or Argentina, where the results of recent races are announced within hours of polls closing. But that’s because these countries only tabulate one election at a time. The decentralized US system prevents the federal government from controlling elections.

Instead, votes are counted in nearly 10,000 separate jurisdictions, each with their own races for state legislatures, city councils, school boards and ballot measures to be tabulated simultaneously. That’s why the USA’s vote counting takes longer.

It may take time to declare the winner

The Associated Press calls races when the trailing candidate is unlikely to close the gap. Sometimes if a candidate is significantly outpaced, the winner can be determined quickly. But if the margin is narrow, every last vote can count. Even in the most efficient jurisdictions in the country, it takes some time for each vote to be counted.

For example, in 2018, Republican Rick Scott won the U.S. Senate race in Florida; conservatives in the state regularly praise him for his fast scoring. However, the AP did not declare Scott’s victory until after the recount was completed on November 20 because Scott’s margin was so slim.

Counting each of the millions of votes also takes time because election officials must process disputed or “provisional” ballots and check whether they were cast legitimately. Overseas ballots from military members or other U.S. citizens abroad can leak at the last minute. Mail ballots often arrive early, but require a lengthy process to ensure they have not been used fraudulently. If this process does not begin before Election Day, the count may be backed up.

Some states, like Arizona, give voters whose mail ballots were rejected because their signatures didn’t match for up to five days to prove they actually cast the ballot. This means final figures may not be available on Tuesday night.

Election rules are to blame in some states

Part of the slowdown is due to state-specific election rules. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two of the key swing states, election officials had been imploring Republican lawmakers for years to change the law barring mail ballots before Election Day. This means mail ballots are counted late and often results are not reported until after Election Day.

Democrats have traditionally dominated mail-in voting, making Republicans appear to be ahead until the early hours of the next morning, when Democratic mail-in votes are finally added to the tally. Experts even use names for this from past elections: “red mirage” or “blue shift.” Trump exploited this dynamic in 2020 when he told his supporters to demand an abrupt end to vote counting; The votes that were not counted were largely mail-in votes for Joe Biden. It’s unclear how this will play out this year, as Republicans vote and switch in large numbers during early voting.

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Michigan had similar restrictions, but Democrats lifted a ban on early processing of mail ballots after taking control of the state legislature in 2022. Jocelyn Benson, that state’s Democratic Secretary of State, said she hopes to have most results by Wednesday.

“At the end of the day, election directors are people who have the ability to deliver those accurate results. “Americans should focus on what they are saying, not what a particular candidate or campaign participants are saying,” said Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Trump’s allies are urging him to quickly declare victory

Some of Trump’s allies say he should be even more aggressive in declaring victory this time.

Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump ally who predicted the president would declare victory in 2020 before the race was called, advocated a similar strategy at a recent news conference after his release from federal prison. His conviction related to Congress’ investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 loss.

“President Trump came and spoke at 2:30 in the morning. He should have done this at 11 in 2020,” Bannon said.

Other Trump supporters took a darker tone. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn suggested in a recent interview on the right-wing American Truth Project podcast that violence could break out in states still counting ballots the day after Election Day because people “won’t stand for it.” ”

Seeking to project a sense that Trump’s win is inevitable, the former president and his supporters are touting early voting data and positive polls to claim the election is almost over. Republicans have returned to early voting after largely avoiding Trump’s direction in 2020 and 2022. In some swing states that track party registration, registered Republicans are outperforming Democrats in early voting.

But that doesn’t mean Republicans are ahead in any meaningful way. Early voting data doesn’t tell you who will win the election because it only records who voted, not how they voted.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is clearly targeting Republicans who are disappointed by Trump. In each of the states where more Republicans are voting, there are also large numbers of voters voting early who are not registered with either major political party. If Harris wins even a fraction of those votes over Trump, that would eliminate the small margin Republicans have.

There’s only one way to find out who won the presidential election: Wait until enough votes are collected, whenever that may be.