This article is excerpted from a longer article by Ariana Figueroa and Ashley Murray on Colorado Newsline on October 27, 2024. Read the full article here.
As a bitter, tight and dark campaign for the presidency moves into its last moments, apprehensive election officials and experts warn Election Day is only the first step.
The closing of the polls and end of mail-in voting kick off a nearly three-month process before the next president of the United States is sworn in on Inauguration Day in January. New guardrails were enacted by Congress in 2022 to more fully protect the presidential transition, following the Jan. 6, 2021 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters and a failed scheme to install fake electors.
But even before that shift to a new chief executive begins, a presidential victor is unlikely to be announced election night or even the following day.
It’s a result that will possibly take days to determine, given tight margins expected in seven swing states. Officials needed four days to count all the votes to determine President Joe Biden the victor of the 2020 presidential election.
In states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the law does not allow that process to begin for millions of mail-in ballots until Election Day. Other states allow pre-processing of ballots.
Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s former Republican secretary of state, said ballot authentication could be on different timelines across the country after voting ends on Election Day.
“We have 50 states, plus D.C., that pretty much all do it differently,” Grayson, who served as president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, told reporters Friday on a call of bipartisan former state election officials who are working to explain the process to the public.
It could mean “in a very close election that we don’t know on election night who the president is or who controls the House or the Senate, but we should feel confident over the next couple of days, as we work through that, that we’re going to get there,” he said.
Lawsuits and potential recounts
Those delays, which former President Donald Trump seized on to spread the baseless lie that the election was stolen from him, are expected again in November, especially as all eyes will be on the battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Additionally, there already are hundreds of pre-election lawsuits, mainly filed by Republicans, ranging from election integrity challenges to accusations of noncitizens allowed to vote in federal elections — something that rarely happens and is already illegal. The legal challenges could further spark delays.
“We will not have a winner on election night most likely and so we need to be able to prepare the public for this,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and CEO of the democracy watchdog group Common Cause, during a Tuesday briefing.
She added that her organization will focus on combating misinformation and disinformation on election night and beyond.
“There is the potential that somebody could claim the win before … all of the votes have been counted,” she said.
In the early morning hours after Election Day in 2020, before results from key states were determined, Trump falsely claimed he won in an address at the White House.
On top of that, experts say this year could see election denial erupting in countless courtrooms and meeting rooms in localities and the states, as well as across social media, if doubts are sown about the results.
Recounts could also delay an official election result, and the laws vary from state to state.
For example, in Pennsylvania, if a candidate demands a recount, three voters from each of the over 9,000 precincts have to petition for a recount.
“We’ve never seen that happen actually in Pennsylvania,” Kathy Boockvar, the commonwealth’s former Democratic secretary of state, said on Friday’s call with reporters.
An automatic statewide recount is triggered in Pennsylvania if there’s a difference of a half percent of all votes cast for the winner and loser. The final recount results, by law, are due to the secretary of state by Nov. 26, and results would be announced on Nov. 27, Boockvar said.
The margin in Pennsylvania’s 2020 results for the presidential election was between 1.1% and 1.2%, not enough to trigger the automatic recount, Boockvar said.
Taking out the shrubs
State election officials have been preparing for the past year to train poll workers to not only run the voting booths but for possible violence — a precaution put in place after the 2020 election — and have beefed up security around polling locations.
On Friday, Trump posted on X that the election “will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”
A reporter asked Grayson about the possibility of aggression from poll watchers. The Republican National Committee announced in April a “historic move to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process,” establishing party-led trainings for poll watchers.
Poll watchers are not a new concept, and Grayson said clear “safeguards” are in place.
“If you’re intimidating, you’re gone. There’s clear laws in every state on that,” he said.
Celestine Jeffreys, the city clerk in Green Bay, Wisconsin, said during a Wednesday roundtable with election workers that the city has an Election Day protocol in place that includes everything from blocking off streets to City Hall to getting rid of shrubbery.
“We have actually removed bushes in front of City Hall” to ensure no one can be concealed behind them, she said. In the second assassination attempt on Trump earlier this year, a gunman hid in bushes outside Trump’s private golf course.
New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said during a Tuesday briefing she is focused on the physical safety of election officials.
During the event with the National Association of Secretaries of State, she said such safety is not only a priority during voting but when officials move to certify the state’s election results in December.
“We have all been spending a lot more time on physical security and making sure that our election officials at all levels are more physically secure this year,” Toulouse Oliver said. “And of course, you know when our electors meet in our states, you know, ensuring for the physical security of that process and those individuals as well.”
On December 17, each state’s electors will meet to vote for the president and vice president. Congress will vote to certify the results on January 6.
“We are thinking a lot more about this in 2024 than we did in 2020, but I think that each one of us … have a playbook in mind for how to handle any unanticipated eventualities in the certification process,” she said.
It’s a security precaution that the U.S. Secret Service is also taking.
For the first time, Congress’ certification of the Electoral College on January 6 has been designated a National Special Security Event, something that is usually reserved for Inauguration Day on January 20.