Three days have passed since Americans went to the polls and it is still not known who won the general elections of the world’s leading power. It’s not the first time it’s happened and it probably won’t be the last. In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden’s victory could only be announced on Saturday (elections are always on Tuesday) and this time the result could take even longer. The different state laws, postal voting, preferential voting systems, the possibility of a second ballot and, above all, the scarcity of the result even prevent the confirmation of a winner.
At this point, both the Republican and Democratic parties have a chance of winning both the Senate and the House of Representatives. While Republicans retain an advantage in the House that makes them favorites, they have a three- or four-seat lead that is by no means guaranteed. If the Democrats win the states where they are ahead and favorites and manage to reverse four more where the Republicans’ lead is close or the count is far behind (in Colorado, Oregon and two in California), there is a possibility that this is the case they reach the magic number of 218 seats, the majority in a House of 435 MEPs. It’s not very likely, they have no margin of error, but it can’t be ruled out either. As of midnight this Thursday, the result was 211-198 in favor of the Republicans with 26 seats undecided.
As for the Senate, everything is open. There are still three seats to be defined and whoever wins two is in control. Arizona and Nevada continue to count votes. In the first case, the Democratic candidate has a big advantage, and in the second, the Republican has a very short one, but there is still a test ahead and any prediction is risky. If each party won either of these two states, it would all be up in Georgia, where neither candidate has exceeded 50% and a second round will be required on December 6th. In 2020 it was already the Georgia tiebreaker that decided the Senate, then on the Democratic side.
But why does the exam take so long? The first thing to understand is that these are not elections with common rules for the whole country. Each state regulates the electoral process in its own way. It pulls the districts of the House of Representatives (which leads to gerrymandering, the partisan demarcation of constituencies), it sets the registration requirements, it sets the rules for early voting in person and for voting by mail, it has its counting machines and even various systems around to determine the winner, including double-round systems as in Georgia and preferential elections as in Maine and Alaska.
Also, this is not just a general election. People elect the House of Representatives across the country and the Senate in 34 states, but also in many they vote for the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Commissioners, Justices of the Supreme State, Appeals and District, various prosecutors, State MPs, city councillors, mayors, school board members… The ballots are unique for each vote and can take up multiple pages with dozens of boxes. This makes the exam difficult.
vote by mail
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Postal voting rules are a major source of bias. Most states will only accept ballots that arrive before polling stations close, but there are states that will accept them days later as long as they are sealed in time. In the case of Nevada, a state of 3.1 million people, ballots will be mailed to all registered voters and are allowed to arrive in the mail by this Saturday. Voters vote massively by mail. Since there is no sufficient verification process in advance, after arrival, a check is made to ensure that the signature matches the registered one. If it doesn’t match or an error is found, poll workers will contact the voter “by letter, phone or email” and the citizen has until Tuesday, November 15, to correct the errors. With a resounding result there would have been a winner sooner, with a close result every vote counts. Obviously the system is very improvable.
Something similar is happening in Arizona and its already famous Maricopa County. First of all, this district is the second largest electoral jurisdiction in the country and has to process a larger volume of ballots with demonstrably insufficient resources. In this case, votes must arrive by mail before the Electoral College closes, but these and anticipated votes will be collected, particularly the so-called “late anticipated votes” that arrive on the same day of the election or the day before. They are not processed until the next day and before they are tabulated with the machine, you have to check the signature, scan it, submit it to party control and finally count it. Also this year, tabulation machines for in-person voters are down, forcing their processing as well. 7.1 million people live in Arizona.
The slowness of counting is being repeated, for similar reasons, in other western states such as Washington, Oregon, and most notably California, where most undecided House seats are now concentrated. In the presidential election, in the Senate seat or in the election for the governor of California, this is usually not a problem since the Democrats in this state usually win by a large margin. In many districts with a clear majority of a party not. However, the equality and the slowness of the count prevent a winner from being declared in the ones still to come.
The delays and incidents in the counting of votes, on the other hand, are the perfect breeding ground for false reports about the cleanliness of the counting process and allegations of voter fraud, even if they are unfounded. Former President Donald Trump did it back in 2020, and in that election he started sowing distrust. This Thursday he wrote on his social network that the Republican majority in the Senate depends on “whether the elections in Nevada and Arizona are rigged or not”.
electoral systems
Another part of the result is delayed by the particular electoral systems of some states. The double round is simple, used only in some states, and almost never needed: if no one exceeds 50% of the vote, there is a runoff between those with the most support. This is precisely the problem that has come into play in Georgia (once again) due to the 2% of the vote achieved by Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver. Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Senator Herschel Walker are now meeting alone in the December 6 election.
The preferred vote is a bit more complex. Three candidates ran for Maine’s second district. Voters arrange them on their ballots according to their preferences. With more than 95% tallying, Democrat Jared Golden has 48.2% of the first vote compared to 44.9% for his Republican rival, but since neither surpasses 50%, they have to calculate 100% of the vote first and then see what was the second preference of voters is the independent Tiffany Bond, which adds 6.9% of the vote to see who takes the seat. The same is happening in Alaska’s only district. There, Democrat Mary Peltola with 80% counted 47.3%, followed by Republican Sarah Palin with 26.6%. The lead seems unassailable, but the third candidate is also Republican Nick Begich with 24.2%. And there’s a fourth, libertarian, at 1.7%. Peltola will likely get enough second votes (Begich disagrees with Palin), but we’ll have to wait at least a week to find out. There are only two seats left in the preferential vote, but with a result this close, they count.
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