EXPLAINER
US states decide poll counting procedures in federal elections, with various rely occasions fuelling misinformation.
When will we all know what number of votes have been solid for Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the USA presidential election on November 5?
It relies upon — and that’s regular.
Within the US, there isn’t a federal vote-counting course of. As a substitute, counting procedures are left as much as the states, and it probably can take weeks for a remaining official tally to be launched.
Nevertheless, a transparent presidential winner usually emerges inside hours or days of polls closing on election day.
The lag between media organisations “calling” an election, and the official certification course of may be complicated to voters.
It may also be fertile floor for election misinformation, together with the false election fraud claims that Trump has continued to unfold since 2020.
How do we all know the winner earlier than all of the votes are counted?
Information organisations have developed complicated methodologies to estimate when a presidential candidate now not has a path to victory within the Electoral School.
The Electoral School is the system that decides presidential elections: A candidate should safe at the least 270 Electoral School votes – that are allotted by state based mostly on the result of their respective vote – to win the White Home.
Information shops successfully “name” every state for a presidential hopeful based mostly on their methodologies, and people projections predict the general winner.
Al Jazeera depends on The Related Press, a information company that has been calling elections for greater than 170 years within the US, for this course of.
Relying on how tight a race is, AP can typically decide a victor swiftly whereas different occasions it might take days.
For instance, it didn’t declare Democrat Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 vote till 4 days after election day. It took one other 16 days to find out that Biden was the winner within the state of Georgia.
OK, however how does the official rely work?
All states permit votes to be solid in some type both within the lead-up to election day or on election day itself.
In some states, mail-in ballots may be verified forward of time after which quickly tabulated on election day, typically by way of automated methods.
However others prohibit any processing till election day itself, which may result in a time-consuming backlog.
States then have various durations of time to self-audit the outcomes. A recount may also be requested in most states relying on the vote margin, whereas others give voters time to appropriate a mistake – or “treatment” a poll.
In the end, state executives should subject so-called Certificates of Ascertainment exhibiting the official, remaining vote tally by a particular date. This 12 months, the deadline is December 11.
The president-elect’s victory then is formally licensed by Congress in January.
Why is that this controversial?
Tight races in key battleground states in 2020 – in addition to a rise in mail-in voting amid the COVID pandemic – noticed significantly gradual vote counts.
That helped gas unfounded claims of election malfeasance pushed by Trump and his allies.
These false claims have been furthered aided by the truth that Democrats usually vote extra by mail-in ballots than Republicans.
Consequently, in states the place there are delays in counting these mail-in ballots, individuals can get the impression that there was a late surge in Democratic votes – also referred to as a “blue shift”.
To counter misinformation, election specialists have referred to as on states to shore up their vote-counting processes.
Whereas some key battleground states have finished so, others – akin to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia – have finished little to guarantee a speedier course of this 12 months.
Georgia’s election board has even moved to require hand counts of votes on election day, which specialists warn may trigger much more vital delays.
