The Nightmare Is Here

Like many, I feel physically sick as we await a determination of whether Biden or Trump is the winner of a contest that will once again likely be decided by rust belt states.  Meanwhile, as expected, Trump is call for a cessation of vote counting and messaging his horrible supporters that any additional votes will be fraudulent.  Never mind the state laws that govern the issue.  I cannot help but think of a column by Frank Bruni in the New York Times a week or so ago that argued the most destressing thing about Trump's win in 2016 is that it revealed much about America and too many Americans: many of our fellow citizens are not the good people we would like to think they are. A piece in The Atlantic looks at Trump's efforts to subvert the valid election laws.  As for Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade County, don't get me started on the idiocy of those who seemingly voted for Trump.  Here are article excerpts:

With most polls closed around the nation, it is clear that Democratic dreams of a quick and decisive Biden victory were just as much an illusion as the president’s hope for a clear-cut win. The winner of the election remains unclear, with the result appearing likely to come down to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—upper-Midwest states that swung from Democrats to Trump four years ago, and where clear results are not expected tonight.

Speaking at the White House around 2:25 a.m. on Wednesday, Trump declared victory and falsely claimed that the results were pending because of misconduct.

“This is a fraud on the American people,” Trump said, baselessly. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”

Trump promised to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to demand an end to vote-counting, which has still not concluded. “We want all voting to stop,” he said.

Even without the results, there are some lessons to draw from the race already. State-level polls suggesting a rosy outlook for Biden seem to have been badly off. (Biden is still likely to win the national popular vote.) The most glaring example is Florida, which appears to be headed into Trump’s column despite Biden consistently but narrowly leading in polls there.

Florida is also a good example of one of the most important trends in the results so far: Trump is outperforming expectations, many polls, and his 2016 results among minority voters. In Miami-Dade County, for example, where more than two-thirds of the population is Hispanic, Biden was leading Trump by just 7.3 percent with 95 percent reporting—in a county Hillary Clinton won by nearly 30 points four years ago.

Results from those states will stream in slowly. Officials in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin say that they do not expect to declare winners tonight, and counting could stretch later into the week. Trump is comfortably ahead in Ohio; Biden polled well in Nevada, where results were slow to arrive. Although Biden is seeing positive signs in Arizona, most of the reach states that he had dreamed of snatching from Trump aren’t breaking his way. Texas is likely to remain Republican. North Carolina is on a knife’s edge. In Georgia, many votes remain outstanding from the Atlanta area, which is expected to tilt heavily Democratic, but Trump currently leads in the state.

This means that the final outcome may not become clear for days. Maine and Nebraska, which award some electoral votes by congressional district, could find themselves in the spotlight. There is even a chance of a 269–269 Electoral College tie, a once-in-a-blue-moon scenario that would send the race to the U.S. House.

The uncertainty will test the strength of the country’s democratic institutions. Americans are accustomed to news outlets projecting the winner of the presidential race on Election Night. Official election results don’t exist until states certify them, which will be weeks from now, but ever more sophisticated numerical analyses have produced an expectation of quick and decisive answers.

“From a legal perspective, there are no results on Election Night, and there never have been,” Edward Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, told me in August. “The only thing that has ever existed on Election Night are projected results that the media has helpfully provided to its audiences.”

Some states will continue to accept ballots for several days, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day or the day before. And surging voter enthusiasm this year means there are likely to be more provisional ballots cast than normal.

The coming hours and days, and potentially weeks, will see a flurry of lawsuits and countersuits as the candidates seek any advantage they can get—and election officials try to figure out who actually won.

The most important state to watch now might be Pennsylvania. Election experts have long viewed the Keystone State as the most likely to cause a nightmare this year, both because it is highly contested and because it has been the subject of intense litigation.

Officials in the state were barred from counting the onslaught of mailed-in votes until Tuesday, which will delay the final count. That will take time, and there’s likely to be more litigation over the state’s decision to accept ballots that didn’t arrive by Election Day and over individual ballots. All of these factors mean that a complete tally is probably still days away at best.

“I’m less worried about the process playing out,” Dan Mallison, an assistant professor at Penn State at Harrisburg, told me. “I’m more worried about the rhetoric, particularly [Trump's] the president’s rhetoric casting delays as a product of fraud or funny business. It’s important to think of this as we’re probably going to have an Election Week, not an Election Day.”

Be very afraid.