All Your Questions About The 2020 US Election, Answered
You probably have a lot of questions. There's a lot going on. We'll try to answer them all here.
Vote counting for the US 2020 elections has dragged into its second day as it is still unclear who will win the Presidency. Joe Biden looks like he has a clearer path to victory, but Trump isn’t out of the race yet.
On top of this, Trump is signalling he’s going to launch a legal challenge against postal votes, at least in Pennsylvania, which is a key battleground state.
Otherwise his conduct has made the whole election a little murky and lots of people have lots of questions.
Here’s an attempt to answer some of those:
What The Hell Is Going On?
Well it looks like the election is really coming down to the wire, and in some states might be decided by postal votes.
This uncertainty has given Trump the space to falsely claim he’d already won the election and try to invalidate these early votes, which he had regularly telegraphed that he would do from the beginning.
He might have done this even if it was a Biden landslide, but this makes things a bit less clear about how they’re going to shake out.
How Will Trump Try To Invalidate Those Votes?
The mechanism Trump will try to “steal” the election with is a Supreme Court challenge. There were also efforts to cut the effectiveness of the US postal service earlier in the year but that’s a moot point now.
Will The Supreme Court Let Him Do That?
This is the million dollar question. The Supreme Court earlier in the year made a ruling which dumped the Democratic governor of Wisconsin’s move to extend the amount of time mail-in ballots were allowed. Because Biden has been encouraging mail-in ballots and Trump has been talking smack about them for months, this was seen as a partisan move. The court is also stacked six-to-three in favour of the Republicans.
But this doesn’t mean that the Court would side with Trump now and if there is even a legal basis to make this challenge.
Using Wisconsin as an example, the court has ruled that mail-in votes must be in on election night. In this ruling, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, argued that the postal votes would “flip” the result of the election rather than seeing them as a result of the election.
This signals that there are some on the court who don’t like the idea of postal votes being counted past election day. But other pundits say the Chief Justice John Roberts would be hesitant to be seen as too partisan, which looks like it may limit the court’s willingness to wade in.
There is no real legal basis for Trump to “stop the votes” or count, or whatever it is he’s spinning. The constitution allows for states to do their presidential elections how they so choose.
Still following? This will get a bit more messy. In Pennsylvania, postal votes could be disallowed if they were received later than November 3 because of some procedural legal stuff I won’t bore you with (but if you’d like a longer explanation check out this Very Good CNN article).
This could swing the election if it comes down to Pennsylvania, but this is not a sure thing. In other states, the legal avenues are much more narrow and it’s unlikely Trump will get a challenge up in the Supreme Court.
The question of the validity of late-arriving postal votes is still pending in the North Carolina state courts, but the Supreme Court has already passed on intervening there. A ruling there could swing the state.
Trump has also launched a lawsuit to pause counting in Georgia, which could also go Joe’s way. It’s not yet clear what will happen with that one.
How Is This Not Decided Upon Before Election Day?
It kind of is, but the Pennsylvania case is outstanding and so are legal actions in North Carolina and Georgia. So, that’s why it’s still in play.
Oh, Wow. So How Long Could It Be Until We Know A Final Result?
It’s normal for it to take days for all votes to be counted. Usually we know the answer sooner than the finalisation of the vote count, because the outcome is clear enough in key states to show a candidate has reached 270 electoral college votes — the requirement to win the presidency.
Because a few states are still too close to call and will come down to postal votes, they’re still counting and we’re still waiting. But theoretically we could know in minutes, hours or days.
Wait — The Electoral College? Isn’t That The Thing That Means Someone Can Lose The Popular Vote And Still Win The Presidency?
Yep, and could be happening again right now. Biden is well ahead in the popular vote but could still lose (it’s unlikely but possible). My colleague Rob Stott already touched on this in his explainer yesterday, so please enjoy his description of it here:
“Ok, this is a tricky one, but it’s important. When Americans vote, they’re not technically voting for a candidate. Instead, they’re voting for an elector, who will vote for a candidate on that person’s behalf. There are 538 electors, meaning a candidate needs to secure 270 electoral college votes to win.
Each state has a certain number of electors, roughly proportionate to the size of their population. So large states like California (55) and New York (29) get more electors than smaller states like Vermont or Wyoming (three votes each). There are other quirks to the system, such as ‘faithless electors’ and states that split their electoral college votes by district, but it’s not worth going into that here…
All this means that a candidate can still win even if they don’t secure more votes than their opponent. As silly as that may seem, it’s exactly what happened in the US in 2016, and in 2000 when George W. Bush ‘beat’ Al Gore (incidentally, it happened in Australia in 1998 when John Howard defeated Kim Beazley but lost the two-party preferred vote).”
Rob also recommends this video by Vox if you’d like to know more.
Oh Good, That’s Still A Thing. What about Congress? What’s Going On There?
Some of the seats in the House (the lower chamber — like our House of Representatives) and the Senate (like our Senate) were up for grabs at the same time as the presidential election. They do these elections on a staggered basis, with some going up now and others coming up in two years time. So we’ll be going through this roller-coaster of emotions again soon, don’t worry.
At the moment it’s still neck-and-neck as vote counts are finalised, but most outlets are projecting that the Democrats will keep the House and the Republicans will keep the Senate.
The House outcome seems a bit more clear but the basis for saying the Republicans will keep control of the upper house is that the Democrats have failed to flip key seats they were targeting. But again, it’s not over yet. One Senate race won’t be sorted until January.
Say Joe Biden Wins The Election, But Loses The Senate? What happens then?
Well, nothing good. It’s entirely possible that he could achieve his stated aim of uniting the nation and mending political divides. But it’s incredibly unlikely.
It would require the Republicans completely changing their behaviour from what we’ve previously seen — blocking legislation and court nominees from the Democrats, opposing much of Biden’s policy platform, and generally being bad-faith political actors who refuse to play nice with their opponents.
So, given that, we can probably expect Biden will have some trouble implementing his legislative agenda which would leave him looking pretty ineffectual, unless of course he can succeed in winning over Republican support.
Did The Polls Get It Wrong Again?
The election results do seem at odds with what polls and pollsters have been telling us for weeks. But in reality, there was always a chance that Trump would win, and prominent pollsters like Nate Silver from FiveThirtyEight were very careful to point this out.
But that being said, national polls are given a lot of weight when the race is really decided in a lot of close (and gerrymandered) constituencies. So yeah. There’s room for improvement.
But having said all of that, the expectation gap of Trump having a one-in-10 chance of victory and coming this close is probably more the issue here.
There Were Worries About Unrest — Has There Been Any?
Yes there has been. The street protests aren’t much different than what we’ve been seeing for months in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter surge. But something that is much more worrying is we’re starting to see what appear to be Trump supporters attempting to stop votes being counted, and screaming Trump’s lies about the election at media.
This isn’t anything too bad yet, but when looked at in the context of Trump signalling to the Proud Boys, a white supremacist militia, that he wanted them to “stand back and stand by” it is quite troubling. It shows his messaging is getting through to his supporters.
Let’s check in on Nevada pic.twitter.com/Vm8LEKLdJC
— Brody Logan (@BrodyLogan) November 4, 2020
#BREAKING: Large, animated crush of “stop the count” protestors trying to push their way into TCF hall in #Detroit where ballots are being counted.
They’re being blocked by guards at the door.
Pizza boxes are pushed against the window to obstruct view. It’s tense. @NBCNews pic.twitter.com/zFhzd88skX
— Steve Patterson (@PattersonNBC) November 4, 2020
What Happened To Kanye?
He only received less than 100,000 votes and conceded. At the moment he’s saying he’ll be back at the next election but honestly who knows with this dude.
That’s all from us for now. If you have any more questions, feel free to tweet @thejimmalo and if he can, he’ll try to help you out.