How long do you think counting will take this year?
Out of the 11 elections in the current (6th) party system, 7 of them were called before midnight on election day. (1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2008, and just barely 2012 although that only just barely got called before midnight).
Out of the other 4: 2016 was called about 2 hours after midnight and 2004 was called about 10 hours after midnight(so both the next morning). 2020 took about 3 days to call, albeit there was no concession here so the exact end-time isn’t clear. 2000 took over a month infamously.
Georgia passed a new law that’s going to make their count take weeks. So there’s that. Basically they killed the county deadline for reporting their total. Which means a red county going blue can drag their heels, until their other new law comes into play. (The state legislature takes over the county election)
That really only effects the question if Georgia is the last state to matter which is highly unlikely in most scenarios (If it goes Blue it’s a 2020 repeat and if it goes Red there’s tight races elsewhere to focus on like Arizona and Pennsylvania). Not the question.
It would have been being recounted right up to the deadline on Tuesday had Bush not filed an injunction the previous Friday.
To be fair, it’s an entirely reasonable argument that recounting four counties using different rules than the rest of the state probably violates equal protection under the law, so you either throw away equal protection as regards elections, make election deadlines unenforceable, or use the existing counts after the previous recount.
As a bonus, Gores last attempted recount would not have won him the election, though according to some media estimates counting the entire state by the method Gore wanted to use in his final recount likely would have tipped the scales. And avoided the equal protection issue, but also would have been impossible before the deadline.
If I recall correctly Gore (probably) won with a full state wide recount, but in the counties he asked for he ironically (probably) would have ended up losing. I say probably because both of these are tight enough to be within the margin of error. Or fix the butterfly ballot issue.
Of course Gore also only won New Mexico by a 366 votes so who knows what that would have ended up with if either side actually cared(not enough EC to matter if they lost Florida, but still dead close and recounts probably favored Bush).
That doesn’t really answer the final question though. Is it going to be called Election Day like 7 of the 11? The day after(or really the morning after) like 2004 or 2016? Is it going to last days like 2020? Or weeks like in 2000?
If I recall correctly Gore (probably) won with a full state wide recount, but in the counties he asked for he ironically (probably) would have ended up losing.
That’s how I understand it, based on what was reported regarding the four county recounts and media orgs doing research after the fact at a statewide level. But not just any recount - a recount using different rules for undervotes than were used for the original count and previous recount. Them wanting to do that was part of the crux of Bush v Gore - using different rules for certain counties than others violates equal protection.
Or fix the butterfly ballot issue.
Doing that would require re-running the election entirely, which definitely wasn’t possible in the 5 days from when Gore started his final partial recount to the election deadline, especially since two of those were a weekend.
That doesn’t really answer the final question though. Is it going to be called Election Day like 7 of the 11? The day after(or really the morning after) like 2004 or 2016? Is it going to last days like 2020? Or weeks like in 2000?
Depends on how many recounts get called for and how many absentee ballots there are. 2020 was unique in terms of the sheer scale of absentee ballots, which extended the count. Trump also fought as much as he could legally for as long as he could, though that didn’t really take the form of continuing recounts like it did with Gore.
I’m going to go with a couple of days for an initial count (either late day after or day after that, depending on number of absentee ballots), add at least a week if anywhere is particularly close (can trigger automatic recounts and are prime targets for candidates to request recounts). If Trump loses, then it depends how much of his lawfare against the election involves recounts if it stops there or not. If Harris loses, expect a few targeted recounts as well if anywhere is kinda close.
Either way I know two things for certain: Harris will win the popular vote, if for no other reason than because she’s going to win California by a large enough margin that she could lose every other state by a margin within believable reason and still win the popular vote. And roughly a sixth or so of the country is going to claim the election was hacked, cheated or stolen in some fashion (basically a large minority of the losing party) regardless of who wins.
Off topic, but looking for an active thread.
How long do you think counting will take this year?
Out of the 11 elections in the current (6th) party system, 7 of them were called before midnight on election day. (1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2008, and just barely 2012 although that only just barely got called before midnight). Out of the other 4: 2016 was called about 2 hours after midnight and 2004 was called about 10 hours after midnight(so both the next morning). 2020 took about 3 days to call, albeit there was no concession here so the exact end-time isn’t clear. 2000 took over a month infamously.
Georgia passed a new law that’s going to make their count take weeks. So there’s that. Basically they killed the county deadline for reporting their total. Which means a red county going blue can drag their heels, until their other new law comes into play. (The state legislature takes over the county election)
That really only effects the question if Georgia is the last state to matter which is highly unlikely in most scenarios (If it goes Blue it’s a 2020 repeat and if it goes Red there’s tight races elsewhere to focus on like Arizona and Pennsylvania). Not the question.
It would have been being recounted right up to the deadline on Tuesday had Bush not filed an injunction the previous Friday.
To be fair, it’s an entirely reasonable argument that recounting four counties using different rules than the rest of the state probably violates equal protection under the law, so you either throw away equal protection as regards elections, make election deadlines unenforceable, or use the existing counts after the previous recount.
As a bonus, Gores last attempted recount would not have won him the election, though according to some media estimates counting the entire state by the method Gore wanted to use in his final recount likely would have tipped the scales. And avoided the equal protection issue, but also would have been impossible before the deadline.
If I recall correctly Gore (probably) won with a full state wide recount, but in the counties he asked for he ironically (probably) would have ended up losing. I say probably because both of these are tight enough to be within the margin of error. Or fix the butterfly ballot issue. Of course Gore also only won New Mexico by a 366 votes so who knows what that would have ended up with if either side actually cared(not enough EC to matter if they lost Florida, but still dead close and recounts probably favored Bush).
That doesn’t really answer the final question though. Is it going to be called Election Day like 7 of the 11? The day after(or really the morning after) like 2004 or 2016? Is it going to last days like 2020? Or weeks like in 2000?
That’s how I understand it, based on what was reported regarding the four county recounts and media orgs doing research after the fact at a statewide level. But not just any recount - a recount using different rules for undervotes than were used for the original count and previous recount. Them wanting to do that was part of the crux of Bush v Gore - using different rules for certain counties than others violates equal protection.
Doing that would require re-running the election entirely, which definitely wasn’t possible in the 5 days from when Gore started his final partial recount to the election deadline, especially since two of those were a weekend.
Depends on how many recounts get called for and how many absentee ballots there are. 2020 was unique in terms of the sheer scale of absentee ballots, which extended the count. Trump also fought as much as he could legally for as long as he could, though that didn’t really take the form of continuing recounts like it did with Gore.
I’m going to go with a couple of days for an initial count (either late day after or day after that, depending on number of absentee ballots), add at least a week if anywhere is particularly close (can trigger automatic recounts and are prime targets for candidates to request recounts). If Trump loses, then it depends how much of his lawfare against the election involves recounts if it stops there or not. If Harris loses, expect a few targeted recounts as well if anywhere is kinda close.
Either way I know two things for certain: Harris will win the popular vote, if for no other reason than because she’s going to win California by a large enough margin that she could lose every other state by a margin within believable reason and still win the popular vote. And roughly a sixth or so of the country is going to claim the election was hacked, cheated or stolen in some fashion (basically a large minority of the losing party) regardless of who wins.