A shift to mail voting is increasing the chances that Americans will not know the winner of November’s presidential race on election night. But that doesn’t mean the results will be flawed or fraudulent, as President Donald Trump suggested on Thursday.
by: Nexstar Media Wire and Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — A shift to mail voting is increasing the chances that Americans will not know the winner of November’s presidential race on election night. But that doesn’t mean the results will be flawed or fraudulent, as President Donald Trump suggested on Thursday.
Trump, seeking to already undermine the results of an election he could lose, demanded that the winner of the Nov. 3 contest be known that night.
”I don’t want to be waiting around for weeks and months and literally, potentially if you really did it right, years, because you’ll never know,” Trump told reporters.
The president has repeatedly raised unsubstantiated fears of fraud involving mail-in voting, which is expected to be more widely used in the November election out of concern for safety given the COVID-19 election. On Thursday, as national and battleground state polls show Trump in political peril in his race against Democrat Joe Biden, he went even further, floating the idea of delaying the election until it could be conducted in person.
The prospect of a delayed election was rejected by fellow Republicans. Shifting Election Day is also virtually impossible for Trump on his own; the date — the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in every fourth year — is enshrined in federal law and would require an act of Congress to change.
What is more likely to be delayed is the result. State election officials in some key battleground states have warned that it might take days to count the votes given what they expect will be a surge of ballots sent by mail. In an election as close as 2016′s, a delayed tally in key states could keep news organizations from calling a winner.
