Nation/World

When will you know if Biden or Trump wins? It could depend on absentee ballot rules in these states

Election night? Try election week.

Election officials and the news media are preparing for delays in 2020 returns as a record-breaking number of voters are expected to take advantage of expanded mail voting options during a pandemic that continues to kill hundreds each day in the U.S.

Making matter worse, slow U.S. Postal Service delivery has raised concerns about whether ballots will be postmarked and delivered on time, and many of the states that decided the 2016 race with the narrowest of margins have outdated laws on counting absentee ballot that don’t account for this year’s uptick.

In 2016, President Donald Trump surpassed the 270 electoral votes necessary to win thanks in part to razor-thin victories in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Electoral College’s 538 electors are doled out on a winner-take-all basis in nearly every state (Maine and Nebraska use a proportional system). Ballots that are discounted because they arrived late could tip the election.

In battleground states across the country, pending lawsuits and legislation could drastically change rules on when ballots must be received and when they can be prepared for counting.

“The unofficial results that we report on election night are just that, always have been, unofficial results,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said at a Sept. 8 news conference. “This year they may be a little more unofficial than usual because we know that we’re going to receive a record number of absentee ballots.”

Trump, who has claimed repeatedly and without evidence that mail voting leads to widespread fraud, has called for results to be finalized on election night. Critics have said Trump is setting up to try to delegitimize the results of an election he might lose, including a scenario in which he is ahead on election night when millions of mail ballots have yet to be counted.

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The president has also said he’s unwilling to approve a funding boost for the Postal Service because of the role it will play delivering millions of absentee ballots. Vote by mail could hurt his election chances, he’s said, arguing that his supporters are more likely to vote in person.

Trump’s stance on mail voting has helped politicize the process. Democratic voters have been requesting absentee ballots at higher rates than Republicans in some battleground states. Democratic governors and Republican-controlled legislatures in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are debating rules on when ballots can be processed and when they’re due. And every battleground state has been subject to lawsuits over mail balloting, with the Trump campaign going after states trying to make it easier to vote in the pandemic.

How long it will take to calculate final results depends on several factors, including when ballots are due and when election officials are allowed to begin preparing ballots for counting.

Before a voter’s selections are tabulated, election officials need to verify the signatures on ballots, open them, flatten them out and scan them through equipment, said Amber McReynolds, CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute. Ideally, local election officials would be allowed to start processing a ballot when it is received, to let voters know their ballot was accepted, she said. The tabulation of actual votes usually comes later.

Her organization has been advocating for changes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which have Democratic governors, Republican-controlled legislatures and laws that prohibit ballot preparation before Election Day.

McReynolds, the former director of elections for Denver, noted that state legislators who “set the rules of the game for the election process” are often reluctant to change the process. “We frankly see a lot of resistance to change, because they got elected in the model that exists,” she said.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has called for her state Legislature to allow election officials to start processing ballots earlier. Officials there expect twice as many mail ballots as usual in November, but a law prohibits any processing before the morning of the election. “If that doesn’t change it may be until Friday evening before the full results of Michigan’s elections are in,” Benson told CNN this month.

Then there’s the question of when ballots must be received: At least six battleground states will accept ballots after Nov. 3 if they’ve been postmarked on or before that day. Others require absentee ballots to be received by election night, though lawsuits in some of those states are pushing to change that.

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