Expect election results to be delayed, but not fraudulent

WASHINGTON — A shift to voting by mail is increasing the chances 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, despite President Donald Trump’s continued insistence Friday.

Seeking to undermine the results of an election he could lose, Trump is stepping up demands that the winner of the Nov. 3 contest be known that night. He is also sowing doubt that election results can be trusted as states look to expand mail-in voting.

“You won’t know the election result for weeks, months, maybe years after,” Trump said. “Maybe you’ll never know the election result. And that’s what I’m concerned with. It’ll be fixed. It’ll be rigged.”

The president has repeatedly raised unsubstantiated fears of fraud involving mail-in voting, which is expected to be more widely used this year out of concern for safety given the COVID-19 election.

Last week, as national and battleground state polls showed 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. After facing bipartisan criticism, Trump inched away from calling for a delay and insisted “nobody wants that date more than me.”

Trump pivoted from the prospect of a delayed election after fellow Republicans roundly rejected it. 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. Election officials in some key battleground states have warned 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.

Delayed results are common in a few states where elections are already conducted largely by mail. But a presidential election hasn’t been left in limbo since 2000, when ballot irregularities in Florida led to weeks of chaos.

For some election experts and Democrats, the prospect of similar uncertainty is especially worrisome this year, given Trump’s frequent declarations that mailin voting is fraudulent and a “threat” to his reelection. The president has also refused to commit to accepting the results of the election, saying it’s too soon to make an ironclad guarantee.

Biden has said he thinks Trump may use his office to intervene and predicted this summer the president might try to delay the contest.

As voters look for a safer alternative to in-person voting, election officials from both parties have promoted mail-in and absentee voting options. Requests for mail ballots have surged in the primaries. Many states expect to be scrambling to process millions more in November.

While each state runs its own process, those mail ballots can take longer to count. In some states, the ballots can be accepted several days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked before polls closed. While some states count the ballots as they come in, others — notably the critical battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania — have laws that forbid processing mail ballots until Election Day, guaranteeing the count will extend well past that night.