Consider This from NPR - What To Expect On Election Day — And In The Days After

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

There is no reason to expect we will know the result of the Presidential election on Tuesday night. Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center and David Scott, deputy managing editor with the Associated Press, explain why. Part of the reason: a few key states will have millions of mail-in ballots to count after in-person voting has concluded. The Supreme Court ruled this week to allow that counting to proceed in two key states, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Election lawyer Ben Ginsberg has been following those cases. NPR's Joel Rose reports watchdog groups who normally monitor elections abroad for violence and unrest are turning their sights toward the U.S. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

We may want to know the results of the election on Tuesday night, but there is absolutely no law or rule that we have to. It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3rd instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate, and I don't believe that that's by our laws. I don't believe that. Believe it. In fact, the only reason we're accustomed to hearing results on election night is that news organizations call races based on unofficial results.

This year, even those calculations are going to take some time. Well, the unofficial results that we get on election night, they're based on the ballots that have been counted so far, typically coming in from in-person voting. Wendy Weiser with the Brennan Center points out in-person voting is going to be down this year, while voting by mail is way up. Those votes take longer to process and count. This year, it might very well be the case that in many states, we don't even know who the winners are on election night or for days after election day.

Consider this. More than 85 million people have already cast a ballot. But there are still legal questions about how some states will tally the final count, how the media will call the winner, and whether the outcome will be embraced peacefully by everyone. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Friday, October 30th. On the next episode of Louder Than a Riot, how a law meant to control the mob changed the mixtape game forever. Gangsta grills is the biggest thing arguably, changed the mixtape game forever.

Gangsta grills is the biggest thing arguably ever in the mixtape's history. Don't tell me that what we're doing is wrong. Listen now to Louder Than a Riot, the podcast from NPR Music. It's Consider This from NPR. And we have our first projections of the night. Take a look at this. Let's consider this from NPR. If you're watching TV Tuesday night, you'll hear the familiar sound of news anchors calling states for one candidate or the other. When a news organization makes these calls, they look at all these wins we're projecting for Hillary Clinton right now. They're doing it with only a portion of the official vote in. By more than 131,000 votes, a big win for Donald Trump in Florida. To make a projection

like that, they take actual voting results, plug them into a calculation that also uses survey and exit poll data, turnout projections, data from past elections, and other metrics. And then once polls have closed and they're confident in what a final result is projected to be, they declare a winner. And in some states, we're able to do so early in the vote count because it's not possible for a trailing candidate to catch up. And in others, we have to wait. David Scott is deputy managing editor at the Associated Press. They're one of the most reputable news organizations out there when it comes to calling election results. In fact, NPR relies on the AP in our own coverage. We don't

declare a winner until they do. But in the presidential race, that doesn't always happen on election night. So in the last seven elections, we've been able to call a winner on election night or by midnight on the East Coast four times. The earliest was in 1996. The voting is just about over in 12 more states. Their polls close at 9 p.m. Eastern time. At 9 p.m. when Bill Clinton won re-election over Bob Dole. And we are going to make some projections. That was about the time other news organizations were able to call the race too. 270 needed to win. ABC News now projects that Mr. Clinton will be re-elected as of now at this point,

9 o'clock Eastern time. A call by 9 p.m. Eastern time this year does not seem likely. And again, in three of the last seven elections, a winner wasn't declared by the AP before midnight. Bottom line, there's no reason we should expect to know who won that night. Just because we don't know by the time we go to bed or by the time the late local news is on doesn't mean anything's wrong. It's not a sign of fraud or malfeasance. It's probably an unfair expectation that we would always know on Election Day before the pandemic. And I think it's certainly an unfair expectation now, especially with just this huge boom of advanced votes.

It's just democracy at work. So counting votes could take some time. But in a few key states, there have been lawsuits about whether or not some votes should be counted at all. And this week, two of those made it all the way to the Supreme Court. One case from Pennsylvania and the other from North Carolina. Now, the cases were a little different, but they both had to do with ballot deadlines. The question is, how long after Election Day can states take to count mail-in ballots that have been postmarked by Election Day? The Supreme Court has been reasonably consistent about deferring to state lawmakers and policymakers on these questions.

Ben Ginsberg is a longtime election lawyer. He was part of the legal team for President George W. Bush in the 2000 election. He spoke to NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about what the Supreme Court's two rulings mean for Election Day and the days after. The practical consequences of the rulings will be that ballots that are postmarked on Election Day can still be counted if they're received within three days of the election in Pennsylvania and nine days in North Carolina. So theoretically, there will be more ballots counted. Part of what's important in the Supreme Court decisions is that if you start changing deadlines, voters are likely to be confused

because they've relied on what they believe the deadlines to be. You were one of the lawyers on the Bush legal team in the last contested presidential election in 2000, which of course was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. How do you rate the chances we might end up in the same place in this election? At 5.2%. 5.2%, okay. There have been 57 presidential elections in our history. Three of them have gone to either a contested election or a recount, so there's a 5.2% chance. Okay. However, we do find ourself in the moment that we're in, in 2020. It's not just about statistics. I mean, what do you think on the chances that we will have an uncontested election result at some point in the days after November 3rd?

I think that there is a lot of concern about this election, in part because of the pandemic and the fact that there is an overwhelming number of absentee mail-in ballots that we've never had before. We're certainly living in a polarized time in our country, which means the rhetoric is more heated than usual. So we naturally turn to contested outcomes. I think it's really unlikely there'll be something like Florida. Florida was an improbably narrow margin in a state that turned out to be outcome determinative in the electoral college. That is a lot of random events lining up. And of course, you can't know at this point whether elections are going to be so close that they fall into a 0.25% that requires an automatic recount in most states.

If I'm hearing you right, you are a veteran election lawyer who is very much hoping this does not end up with the lawyers, that this election does not end up being decided in the courts. Absolutely. I mean, the country is feeling a little bit fragile between the pandemic and the rhetoric and the polarization involved. I think we would all be much better off with clear-cut results. Ben Ginsberg with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly.

If the results of the election are not clear-cut on Election Day or soon after, there are concerns that the president could declare an early victory or that he could make allegations of fraud or vote tampering, both of which we have to say are exceedingly rare in American elections. In any event, if the results are uncertain or even made to seem that way, the concern is that protest and counter-protest could lead to violence. That's something U.S.-based human rights groups normally watch for when they monitor elections abroad.

Now they're watching things here at home. NPR's Joel Rose has more. Fifty years ago, Harayar Balian fled Lebanon, the country where he was born, to escape from civil war and political turmoil, and landed in the U.S. I never imagined that in this country I would worry about the same things that I was worried when I lived in Lebanon. Balian directs the conflict resolution program at the Carter Center, started by former President Jimmy Carter, in part to ensure fair elections in the developing world.

Balian has worked in the Balkans and former Soviet states, though never on a U.S. election until now. Balian told me he doesn't want to sound like an alarmist, but some of the things he sees happening in this country, they're pretty alarming. What we fear is that guns, protests, and elections do not mix well. Experts in global conflict see rising signs of potential violence around the election here.

There's a good chance that no clear winner will emerge on election night, and deep concern about what will happen next, especially if protesters and counter-protesters collide in the streets. The Carter Center is operating behind the scenes, working with local faith leaders in an effort to keep everyone calm, while other conflict resolution groups are also sounding the alarm. Tim Phillips is the founder of the nonprofit Beyond Conflict. He's worked in places like South Africa and Northern Ireland, and didn't think U.S. democracy would face the same problems.

The United States had been promoting democratic elections and democracy around the world. And when we looked at our own problems, we thought, of course, we have some big issues. But we're, in a sense, immune from an us-versus-them mindset, where there could be real conflict. I thought I was dreaming. I thought I was having nightmares. Harayer Balian says he and other experts know the warning signs of potential violence from their experience around the world. We look for early signs so that we can come up with early interventions before all hell breaks loose. Balian says he's watched with a growing sense of dismay as he recognized more and more of those early warning signs in the U.S. The first warning sign, growing polarization

along racial and identity lines. The country was polarized politically, and then came this summer's national reckoning over racial justice, as protests turned violent in Oregon, in Kentucky, in Minnesota, and Wisconsin. In Kenosha, a teenager allegedly shot and killed two protesters this summer. That brings us to the second warning sign for conflict experts, when extremists start to take matters into their own hands. Those experts found it deeply alarming when the FBI said earlier this month that it had thwarted a plot by self-styled militias in Michigan to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.

I knew this job would be hard. But I'll be honest, I never could have imagined anything like this. A third warning sign is when political rivals seek to gain total power and cut out the other side. But experts say there are reasons for optimism, too. Tim Phillips says U.S. democracy, the oldest in the world, is still strong,

and he believes Americans are actually not quite as divided as we think. Are we going to see the levels of violence that I've seen in Northern Ireland or South Africa or Central America and Bosnia? I really don't think so. But that's not to diminish the real threat that acts of violence can have in this country. Phillips says there is still time to de-escalate tensions before all hell breaks loose. But that would require our elected leaders

to denounce violence before it is too late. NPR's Joel Rose. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Audie Cornish.