Over the last month, millions of Americans have cast their votes on whether to keep President Trump at the White House or to elect a new leader for the nation. As of November 7, Joe Biden has become the projected president-elect.
According to U.S. Elections Project, almost 60 million Americans had already submitted their ballots prior to Election Day. This outcome made many people anxious to see how the election was going to turn out.
During Election Day, President Trump had a considerable lead. He was leading in all of the key swing states he needed to win. However, the state of Pennsylvania stated that they would halt the vote count until the next morning due to not having enough poll workers to count the ballots.
There were similar situations in other key swing states as well. Americans were wondering if there was an explanation as to why it took so long to count all the votes, while states like Texas and Florida finished that same night. Dr. Meredith Conroy from the political science department at CSUSB provides an explanation as to why the ballots in Pennsylvania took longer to track.
Dr. Conroy stated, “Mail-in ballots take longer to count. Some states like Pennsylvania did not allow mail-in ballots to be opened until Election Day.”
The question of Florida and Texas finishing their count before other states is a question that strikes curiosity among most Americans. Dr. Conroy claimed, “Texas and Florida didn’t count all their ballots in a day, it takes states many days to count all their ballots. The reason Texas and Florida were called earlier was not because all the ballots were counted. It was because the race wasn’t close enough to need to wait for all the ballots to be counted to know which candidate would win.”
47% of the voters were expecting a different result from this year’s election and were unsatisfied with the election results. Karina Nuñez, a psychology major at CSUSB, was among one of those voters. She was suspicious that there was potential fraud taking place.
Nuñez stated, “I find it kind of odd that states like Michigan and Wisconsin had over 200,000 votes all going to Joe Biden shortly after they stopped counting votes.” Nuñez continued to say, “States like Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina are razor-thin, yet three out of the four states claimed Joe Biden as their winner.”
While there are people who were disappointed with the outcome, others were satisfied with how the election turned out.
Joe Biden is expected to take office on January 20, 2021.
The comment by Nunez should be addressed. It is baseless. Election “night” has always been about watching as states tally ballots, which come in from precincts all over the state, so obviously who is winning is going to change over the course of the night. Also, Democrats were more likely to vote by mail. This is why when mail in ballots were tallied Biden’s lead increased more than President Trump’s. We cannot know the result of an election until all the ballots are counted.