As the 2024 election comes to an end, the world is eagerly awaiting to see who will emerge victorious. Will former President Donald J. Trump triumphantly return to the Oval Office? Or will Vice President Kamala Harris make history as the first ‘madam president?’ Which party will control the House and Senate, and who will win each chamber’s leadership races? Buckle up – we’re about to find out.
The Electoral College Process
America’s Founding Fathers were wise in many ways, but their design for how we would select our chief executive was not simple. What follows is a brief explanation of the compromises, checks, and balances enshrined in the Constitution and subsequent laws for how Americans elect our presidents.
Instead of a simple popular vote election by citizens, Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution explains that the president is to be elected by a majority vote of Electors from each state. Electors are people chosen by each state who are instructed to vote for the presidential candidate who earned the most votes from voters in their state. There are 538 Electors in all, and the number of Electors for a given state equals the number of seats that the state has in the U.S. House and Senate. States and counties generally run their elections, although the U.S. Department of Justice enforces federal election laws.
Once selected, Electors send their vote for president and vice president to be counted in a joint session of Congress in Washington, D.C. This joint session is led by the President of the Senate, who is the Vice President (currently Kamala Harris). The candidate who receives the majority of Electoral votes will be the next president. If no candidate receives the majority of Electoral votes, the House of Representatives (currently controlled by Republicans) will choose the next president. This joint session occurs on January 6th, and the new president is inaugurated on January 20th. There are nine weeks between Election Day (November 5) and the day Congress certifies the vote.
In 2022, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act (ECRA) to clarify the rules and procedures of this critical process. Generally, ECRA pushes most procedural disputes to be resolved in courts rather than by Congress. The ECRA requires that the identity of Electors be known before the certification of the vote so that there is no confusion during the joint session as to which Electors are legitimate. The ECRA also made it significantly more difficult for Members of Congress to object to the certification of the vote.
Counting the Votes
As was previously mentioned, elections are largely run by states and counties, which means that rules pertaining to details like voter registration and voter identification can vary dramatically from state to state. Since the 2020 election, many states have passed laws that increase requirements for voter identification and penalties for election fraud. Most election officials are local volunteers who work alongside state officials to enforce election laws at precincts and while counting votes.
Supporters of both parties can volunteer to observe election officials, ensuring accuracy and confidence in the outcome. The Harris and Trump Campaigns have recruited tens of thousands of people in every state to serve as poll watchers during the election, as count observers after polls close, and as legal experts to staff hotlines to field questions and reports of fraud.
Already, over 100 lawsuits have been filed by the RNC and the DNC related to November’s election. While swarming lawyers are nothing new to American elections, the scale of both parties’ legal operations is unprecedented. The number of lawsuits will balloon across the country as the election comes to a conclusion, with each side doing whatever it can to get an edge.
Two out of every three eligible voters, roughly 160,000,000 Americans, turned out to vote in the 2020 presidential election. The scale of this operation, coupled with widespread anxiety about the stakes of the election, will almost certainly keep election lawyers busy this year.
When to Expect an Outcome
Although both sides would prefer to win in a landslide, the best and most current polling indicates that this election will likely be extremely close in several battleground states like Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. In 2016, Trump won the presidency by beating Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin by a combined 107,000 votes, or 0.09% of the votes cast in the election. Despite that razor-thin victory, his lead in each of those states was enough to call the election within hours of polls closing.
Election results in 2020 were delayed in many states because of the extra time it requires to receive, certify, and count mail-in ballots (because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of voters who voted by mail increased from 25% in 2016 to 43% in 2020). According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, 40 states and D.C. now allow some ballot processing before Election Day, up from 27 in 2020, which should speed up mail-in vote tallying this year.
The reality is that this election will be the first time many new state and federal election laws will be tested, and there is a real possibility that it will take days – even weeks – before we have certainty of a winner. If there is a delay in the results, the following are ways to stay accurately up to date:
Read the news, not just headlines.
Be skeptical of the “news” you see on social media, and don’t ‘like’ or share posts that you haven’t read entirely or can’t verify. Posts that tap into fear, anger, and anxiety drive clicks and shares, and nefarious social media accounts know this well. Additionally, be aware that foreign adversaries continue to use fake news on social media to further divide Republicans and Democrats.
Do your research, and don’t rely on just one or two media outlets for all of your news. Media outlets are in competition with one another – make them sell you on why you should believe them. If a news outlet only ever tells you what you want to hear, you should probably consider looking elsewhere for your news.
Reach out to a team member at Bridge with any questions. We are here for you!
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