The COVID-19 pandemic and former President Donald Trump’s assaults on voting by mail fully upended the way in which individuals vote in elections.
Democrats at the moment are extra more likely to vote early in-person or by mail, whereas most Republicans wait till Election Day to forged ballots. And people voting patterns could make election nights complicated to onlookers, because the outcomes can look very totally different relying on the order through which these ballots are tabulated.
In states the place ballots forged on Election Day are counted first, it will possibly result in a phenomenon generally known as a Crimson Mirage, the place Trump appears to be forward however his lead diminishes as early and mail-in ballots then get counted, resulting in a so-called Blue Shift.
Political analyst and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich describes the phenomenon on this useful explainer—and predicts that Trump will attempt to exploit it.
In 2020, Trump used these Crimson Mirages to attempt to allege fraud and sow mistrust about his eventual loss to President Joe Biden.
“Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted,” Trump tweeted in 2020, as his leads evaporated and it grew to become clear Biden was going to win.
This 12 months, Trump’s allies anticipate he’ll attempt to do one thing comparable and declare victory earlier than sufficient ballots are counted to know who truly gained.
And Michigan is making an attempt to keep away from a Crimson Mirage by permitting mail-in ballots to be preprocessed, making it sooner for officers to depend ballots which are more likely to favor Harris and keep away from a protracted Crimson Mirage.
Regardless of how votes are tabulated, if the race is as shut as polls counsel, it could possibly be some time earlier than we all know the result of the election, as late-arriving mail-in ballots might turn into the deciding issue that determines who wins the Electoral School.
In a name with reporters on Monday afternoon, Harris’ marketing campaign stated that whereas they anticipate states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan to have near-complete outcomes by the top of Tuesday evening, they assume outcomes from different states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada might take for much longer to return in.
“We could not know the outcomes of this election for a number of days, however we’re very targeted on staying calm and assured all through this era as the method goes via,” Harris marketing campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon instructed Reuters.
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