People often rely on precedents, because the past is usually a general guide for how things go.
But precedents may be *misleading* for this year's presidential election...
There may be no clear winner declared on Election Night.
It is now taking *much* longer for states to count all ballots.
Covid is not just "doubling or tripling" how many people vote by mail - absentee ballots spiked by *FIFTEEN* times in primaries in PA & NV
So a close presidential election could take days or weeks to decide.
That could be the electoral & legal reality; there may be nothing *illegitimate* about it -- other than "expectations" that races are typically resolved faster.
("Typical" is basically arbitrary; The 2000 presidential election took 35 days; only the legal deadlines matter.)
Democracy expert @WendyRWeiser walks through the facts showing how this is all changing fast, along with her ideas to protect voting rights and vote-by-mail: newsweek.com/protect-democr…
. @AmyEGardner has a useful breakdown of data & policy implications-how states are adjusting to a new voting reality
Many "rules virtually guarantee that results won’t be available on the night of the election .. the public [must] shift its expectations"
washingtonpost.com/politics/barri…
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