I don’t follow national news too closely… and I hear from friends that most of it is rather depressing. The main goal of the Pagosa Daily Post has been, since its inception, to cover local and regional stories, and share some analysis of those stories. The information we share is, admittedly, incomplete. We can report only the details we’ve been able to uncover.
For example. We will probably have somewhat limited information to report tomorrow. About the 2020 election results, I mean.
The polls will close tonight, in Archuleta County, at 7pm. (Did you re-set your clocks?) The community has already returned a fair number of mail ballots — about 1,070 as of last Wednesday — but the number already submitted statewide is even more impressive. More than 2.7 million ballots have been returned in Colorado, according to data released Monday from the Colorado Secretary of State’s office. Some commentators are predicting an 80% voter response this year.
It’s my understanding that Colorado has, over the past decade, developed one of the most efficient and safe voting systems in the US, and even with a record turn-out, we will probably have unofficial (but still meaningful) state-wide and county-wide results by tomorrow morning. WE should know, for example, how our County Commissioner races turned out. And we should know how most of the state-wide races and ballot measures turned out.
We will probably have some certainty about whether our US Senator, for the next six years, will be John Hickenlooper or Cory Gardner. We will probably know which woman — Diane Mitsch Bush or Lauren Boebert — will be representing Congressional District 3 for the next two years.
But not all US states have the benefit of a well-oiled election machine like ours. And looking at the national polling (yes, I do occasionally glance at the national news) it seems that several swing states are showing tight races of the Presidential type.
We will probably not know, tonight, or even tomorrow, who has won the Presidential election.
This will not be the first time the final results of the US Presidential election were delayed. (Assuming they are delayed, as seems likely.) Some of our readers will recall the Presidential election of 2000.
Both major-party candidates, Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, had focused their campaigns mainly around domestic issues — the budget, tax relief, reforms for federal social insurance programs.
On election night, it was unclear who had won, because the electoral votes of the state of Florida were still undecided. On November 8, 2000, the Florida Division of Elections reported that Bush won with 48.8% of the vote in Florida, a margin of victory of 1,784 votes. The margin of victory was less than 0.5% of the votes cast, so a legally mandated automatic machine recount occurred. On November 10, with the machine recount finished in all but one county, Bush’s margin of victory had decreased to 327. (A later analysis showed that a total of 18 counties — accounting for a quarter of all votes cast in Florida — did not carry out the legally mandated machine recount.)
On December 8, the Florida Supreme Court, by a vote of 4-3, ordered a statewide recount of all under-votes, over 61,000 ballots that the vote tabulation machines had missed.
The Bush campaign immediately asked the US Supreme Court to stay the decision and halt the recount. Justice Antonin Scalia, convinced that all the manual recounts being performed in Florida’s counties were illegitimate, urged his colleagues to grant the stay immediately.
On December 9, the five conservative justices on the Court granted the stay for Bush, with Scalia citing “irreparable harm” that could befall Bush, as the recounts would cast “a needless and unjustified cloud” over Bush’s legitimacy. In dissent Justice John Paul Stevens wrote:
To stop the counting of legal votes, the majority today departs from three venerable rules of judicial restraint that have guided the Court throughout its history. On questions of state law, we have consistently respected the opinions of the highest courts of the States. On questions whose resolution is committed at least in large measure to another branch of the Federal Government, we have construed our own jurisdiction narrowly and exercised it cautiously. On federal constitutional questions that were not fairly presented to the court whose judgment is being reviewed, we have prudently declined to express an opinion. The majority has acted unwisely. … [A] stay should not be granted unless an applicant makes a substantial showing of a likelihood of irreparable harm. In this case, petitioners have failed to carry that heavy burden. Counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm. On the other hand, there is a danger that a stay may cause irreparable harm to respondents — and, more importantly, the public at large … . Preventing the recount from being completed will inevitably cast a cloud on the legitimacy of the election.
The highly controversial 5–4 Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore, ended the recount, and Bush was determined to have won Florida by 537 votes, a margin of 0.009%.
Media organizations later analyzed the ballots and concluded that the originally pursued, limited county-based recounts would have confirmed a Bush victory, whereas a state-wide recount would have revealed a Gore victory. Florida later changed to new voting machines to avoid punch cards, which had produced dimpled or hanging chads. A number of scholarly articles have characterized the decision as damaging the reputation of the Supreme Court, increasing the view of judges as partisan, and decreasing Americans’ trust in the integrity of elections — an outcome predicted by Justice Stevens in his dissent.