On the day after voting, we ask, ‘What’s next?’

Our hope and plea is that we turn a corner and come together under the leadership of whichever candidate wins.

“What’s next?”

The question made popular by the early 2000s’ TV show “West Wing” seems appropriate entering the day after Election Day 2020.

Even as we write this before the sun sets on voting Tuesday, we are confident that a winner has not yet been declared in the presidential race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

The surge of millions of Americans casting their ballots by mail will require extensive counting that creates a delay, particularly in Pennsylvania where the laws that established voting by mail require that the count could not begin before Election Day.

As of now, ballots received in Pennsylvania over the next three days can be counted if postmarked by Nov. 3, but that provision, already challenged in court, may be taken up again by the Supreme Court and reinforced or reversed. Either way, it is prescient of a days- or weeks-long wait for a determination of the final count.

The potential for a delay in declaring a winner is not unprecedented. The 2000 election in which then-Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush vied to succeed Bill Clinton as president was too close to call for weeks.

In the end, challenges to the ballot count in Florida went to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 in favor of the votes going to Bush. Gore conceded on Dec. 13, more than five weeks after the Nov. 7 election. Bush went on to serve two terms as president.

In anticipation of similar close calls, Trump has repeatedly made claims that this election would be marked by fraud, setting up scenarios in which lawyers go to work and courts are called upon to decide whether votes count. Indeed, both sides were teeing up teams of lawyers Tuesday in preparation for challenges to the outcome.

The presidential race is just one of many that were on Tuesday’s ballot as crucial Senate and legislative contests that could be too close to call and could face challenges.

But beyond the question of “what’s next?” in counting the vote and declaring winners, we take a moment to ask what’s next for the nation.

When the crowds clear and the counts are certified, the winner will face the wreckage of the rancor and bitter rhetoric that has marked the election cycle. Add to that a pandemic that is aggressively spreading in a fall resurgence of cases. The percentage of COVID-19 positivity in our own counties and the uptick in cases is cause for alarm on both sides of the political spectrum.

Our nation is in a crisis of divisiveness. We have witnessed during the past year the anxiety and heartbreak of this pandemic that has sickened thousands, isolated friends and families, taken away jobs and livelihood for many and plunged neighbors into poverty. The Memorial Day death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis brought to the surface long-held racial tensions and inspired demonstrations for racial justice. Those demonstrations, while peaceful in our own communities, sparked waves of violence across America’s cities. Then came this election cycle that capitalized on both the pain of the pandemic and the destruction of protests.

How do we begin to navigate what’s next? Our hope and plea is that we turn a corner and begin to come together under the leadership of whichever candidate carries the vote. That choice to embrace divisiveness or healing begins in our communities — in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our schools, and in the social media networks of friends and followers.

It would be unrealistic to expect that the intense partisanship will just go away overnight, but it is not out of the question to expect that we start — somewhere — to find common ground. For all its messiness, this election has shown that Americans on both sides are passionate about their country, invested in the future and determined to recover from the trials of 2020 and build a better tomorrow. Let those common goals heal us and guide the way to whatever is next.

As to who leads the way, we’ll have to wait and see.