JULIE JACOBSON: I had ordered a mail-in ballot, but the
last week or two has gotten me terrified
about what's going to happen to mail-in ballots.
TERRANCE PONDS: Right now, that's our only option.
Do I have 100 percent faith in them? No. I don't.
JONATHAN RICHES: What the fear is, that the mail-in ballots
are going to trickle in later and there's going to be a lot of
cheating involved.
CHLOE NORMAND: Everyone's, like, ready to vote and
doesn't want their vote to be suppressed and
doesn't want to wait and wants to get it over
with and wants to know the results
by the day of the election.
MILES PARKS: So let's get this out of the way right now:
There's a very real chance that we won't know who
won the presidency on election night this year,
and that's OK. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting for NPR,
and I'm here to explain why this is the case,
and why it's not something to freak out about.
As you probably know, there's going to be
a lot more voting by mail this year
because of the pandemic than there ever has been before,
maybe close to half of all votes in the U.S.
But it's important to understand that counting mail
ballots takes more time and more resources than
counting in-person votes. And states have really different
rules about when that process can take place. In some states,
election officials can start way before Election Day.
They can open the envelopes, check people's names and
signatures and even run them through high speed counters.
They just can't release the results. In those states, the
votes that come through the mail are some of the first
results you see on your TV on election night.
But not all states allow that process to start so early. In a
handful of states, including a few battlegrounds, election
officials can't start any of that work until on Election Day or a
few days before. So you can imagine in some of those counties
where there are thousands and thousands and thousands of
absentee ballots coming in, it may take some time
to get all of them counted and added to the votes
that people cast in person.
One other thing that could mean a waiting game for results:
Not all vote-by-mail ballots have to be in by Election Day.
A lot of states have rules that just say ballots need to be
postmarked by Election Day, but they can still be counted
if they arrive to officials days later. So that way, if there's a mail
delivery delay, that doesn't mess with people's votes. But that
also means in a lot of states on the night of Nov. 3,
officials won't even have all of the legally cast ballots in hand
in states that could be really competitive, like Wisconsin or
Pennsylvania, that may make it hard to know
who won immediately.
Let's take a step back here. None of these things are
mistakes or problems, really.
Even if some people want to make it seem like they are.
DONALD TRUMP: They think they're going to send
hundreds of millions of ballots all over the
United States and it's going to come out. You won't
know the election result for weeks, months, maybe years after.
Maybe you'll never know the election result,
and that's what I'm concerned with.
PARKS: Mail ballots take longer to count because
officials are going through safeguards
that make it so people can vote anonymously
and in a secure way.
And counting mail ballots that have been cast
by Election Day, but which take a little longer to arrive, mean
literally hundreds of thousands more of people's votes will
count. The real problem, according to experts in the
federal government, is when people try to sow doubt in the
results because they're taking a little longer to calculate, or
because the numbers are changing in the days
after Election Day.
We know this is a period where conspiracy theories can take
off because the American public, by and large, doesn't have
a great understanding of how the election system works.
In Florida in 2018, then Gov. Rick Scott was running for a
Senate seat. As the absentee votes were counted, his lead
dwindled and he claimed fraud without providing any evidence.
RICK SCOTT: The people of Florida deserve fairness
and transparency, and the supervisors
are failing to give it to us. Every Floridian should be
concerned there may be rampant fraud happening in Palm
Beach and Broward counties.
PARKS: The fact is, election results always take time.
The numbers you're seeing on your TV on election night have
never been the official results.
They're projections made by media organizations
based on early returns and other data. This year, because
of all the changes in our voting system, those projections
may just take some more time. Remember, the most important
thing here is not instant gratification. It's having an
accurate count people have confidence in, where all legally
cast ballots are counted. That's what matters,
even if it takes a little longer.
For more elections coverage, check out the
NPR Politics Podcast, or head over to NPR.org.
I'm Miles Parks. Thanks for watching.