As voters in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere head to the polls, in what will be just the fourth general election since the spread of COVID led to significantly expanded early and mail voting nationwide, it’s hard not be reminded of the widespread anxiety — and fearmongering — about election results taking “too long” in recent years.
This now-predictable cycle of agitation over “delayed” election results has paved the way for growing election denialism. Most memorably, the results of the 2020 presidential election were not announced until nearly five days after Election Day. In that interim, President Trump claimed an early election-night victory and his supporters protested with chants of “Stop the Count,” with the implication that votes counted after Election Day were somehow invalid or fraudulent.
With the momentous 2024 presidential election on the horizon, it’s time to rethink where Election Day fits within the electoral process and recalibrate our expectations for election projections and results.
As televised election results have grown in popularity since the 2000 presidential election, many Americans have come to view Election Day as a sporting event. We host election watch parties, complete with games and party favors. We gather around our televisions with eager anticipation, while news outlets build excitement and expectation with clocks counting down to polls closing. Television networks cycle through undecided races in their chyrons, and use flashy graphics and touchscreen displays to keep us locked in, waiting for imminent results.
Naturally, when those news outlets are unable to immediately project a result based on unofficial vote counts once those countdowns hit zero, something feels wrong. Hours go by without resolution. Election night parties fizzle out, with attendees not knowing whether to celebrate a victory or lament a loss. For too long, election observers have been poorly served by the media’s rush to publish projections based on limited election results.
Understanding an election as a process, not a single day, is an important step in reconfiguring our expectations and deepening our appreciation for the hard work of election administration — as is the recognition that the “election results” broadcast on cable news are actually just well-informed projections based on unofficial partial results from localities, exit polling, and historical data.
Election Day is never the end of an election, it’s just the end of the vote-casting process, during which citizens submit their preferences to election administrators by voting by mail or in person, whether on Election Day or during early voting. But Election Day is also the beginning of another stage, during which election officials compile results and ultimately certify a winner. While it may not make for great television, the vote-counting process is just as important as the vote-casting process. Officials need time to collect, compile, count and verify votes to ensure that results are accurate and complete.
So when we hear pundits complain that election results take “too long,” we should ask why these pundits are operating on an expectation that television networks will be able to make a projection within the narrow window between polls closing and midnight on Election Day. This by-product of the modern 24-hour news cycle makes us feel like something is wrong when we don’t get immediate results—as if the Super Bowl ended without a team winning. But just because one side didn’t run up the score enough for the network election desks to make a confident projection, doesn’t mean there is something wrong with the ultimate result.
To restore faith in our elections, we have to be patient and let election officials do their job.
Omeed Alerasool is an attorney at Elias Law Group, where he litigates democracy and voting rights cases across the country.