The longest US election in history took a total of 5 weeks. From election day to the announcement of the winner, it took a total of 35 days to decipher who the winner was. For those of you interested in American politics, you might have recognised that I am talking about the 2000 US Election when George W Bush went against Al Gore. This particular election may have been the closest election ever, with Bush winning 271 electoral college votes, only ONE over the magic line of 270. The result was reached eventually, but only after 5 weeks of deliberation, recounting and legal battles. Now 20 years later, we might be seeing history repeat itself.
As of writing this, Joe Biden has a lead of 253, against Trump's 214. Over the last 3 days, since the counting began, Trump and his campaign have been throwing out allegations left, right and centre, everything and anything from voter fraud to the unfairness of mail-in ballots. He has also asked some states in which he is winning to stop counting, but in the states where he is losing, he wants recounts. It seems to me, and others, that President Trump is reaching in desperation. Trump is, as has been mentioned multiple times across the media, completely within his rights to call for recounts but his accusations against the counters without any evidence at all is completely unacceptable.
The biggest of these allegations is that of voter fraud - that is, that Biden and the Democrats have forged votes and created thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of extra votes for the Democratic candidate. In a statement the other day, Trump said that 'if you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election away from [him]'. The 'illegal votes' he is talking about here are postal votes that come in after the election day. In over half of the states, mail-in ballots are allowed to be counted as long as they are postmarked for the 3rd of November. This deadline varies from state to state, but in most of the swing states that will decide the outcome of this election (Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, etc.) late mail-in ballots are allowed. This means that the votes are not illegal, but still could be fraudulent.
So what steps are taken to ensure that votes are not fraudulent? These mail-in ballots are checked for a signature and in some states, an address check is carried out. The signature checking is a complicated procedure, that can be done by either man or machine. They compare different points of significance on both the original signature and the signature on the ballot. This can give a pretty good understanding of whether the signature is real or forged, but there is a higher percentage of error when the signatures are checked by people than computers. Even when ballots are rejected based on the signature, some states allow the voter to send in another signature or come in and vouch for the ballot. In others, the rejected ballots are put to the side, to be used in the case of severe challenges. This tells us that there are many steps, more than enough, to ensure the safety and authenticity of the votes.
Will President Trump's legal challenges go very far? No. There is no substantial evidence to support his claims. If he does take these challenges to the Supreme Court, as he said he will, it will more likely be a ploy to gain more time as President than to actually gain an upper hand over Biden. If Biden wins Pennsylvania, where his lead is growing by the minute, he will cross the all-important line of 270. For Trump to get re-elected, he needs to win in at least 4 of the swing states out of the 5 that have not declared yet. Of these 5, 4 of them are swinging to Biden, including the one with the most Electoral College votes, Pennsylvania.
You may have seen a pattern here. Pennsylvania is the number one priority for both parties now. This one state is going to be the difference between who wins and loses. But in the meantime, be on the lookout for important developments - I have a feeling that some will be coming in soon.
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