Election night will start red in some states and blue in others. Neither is the result

Opinion

By Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON — Two weeks from now, someone will post a screenshot of an early lead and call it a trend, and someone else will call the later swing a theft. Both should know better, and so should the rest of us. How a state counts its votes is set by law and known in advance. This year the gap between early returns and final results may be wider than usual.

The poll that shows the gap

The latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos survey measured it. Likely voters who plan to vote in person on Election Day, about 4 in 10, favor Republicans by 11 points, ABC reported. Those voting early by mail, just under 3 in 10, favor Democrats by 26 points. Early in-person voters, about a quarter, favor Democrats by 14. About 1 in 10 plan to drop off a ballot before Election Day, and they favor Democrats by 50 points. (The poll’s topline puts the planned split at 42 percent Election Day, 27 percent mail, 24 percent early in person and 7 percent drop-off among registered voters.)

Overall, the same poll found Democrats ahead 52 to 44 among likely voters, as the Inquisitor reported. Those numbers are a snapshot, not a forecast, but the pattern is consistent: which ballots get counted first now depends heavily on party.

The law decides who leads at 9 p.m.

Whether that produces a “red mirage” or a “blue shift” depends on when each state lets officials open and scan mail ballots. The National Conference of State Legislatures keeps a table of the rules, and they vary a lot:

• In Pennsylvania, processing cannot begin until 7 a.m. on Election Day. In Wisconsin, it begins after the polls open that day. In both, the in-person vote can be reported first while mail ballots are still being opened.
• In New Hampshire, which has a competitive Senate race, absentee envelopes are opened starting at 1 p.m. on Election Day, and the ballots are counted after the polls close.
• In Michigan, jurisdictions with at least 5,000 people may begin processing eight days early, and those with an early tabulation board may scan ballots before Election Day.
• Arizona, Florida and Virginia allow processing as ballots arrive, and North Carolina begins on the fifth Tuesday before the election, so their early mail vote can be in the first returns.
• In Nevada, scanning may begin 15 days before Election Day, and the law allows the count to run until the seventh day after it.

In the first group, early returns will tend to favor Republicans and then move toward Democrats as mail ballots are added. Where mail ballots are counted first, the night can open with a Democratic lead that narrows as Election Day precincts report. Neither movement is evidence of anything except the order of the count.

Why it matters more this year

Expectations matter because the administration has spent the fall questioning the vote count. In California, the Justice Department has asked a court to make the state set aside mail ballots from about 20,000 registrants it calls “likely” noncitizens. The department’s own acting deputy attorney general concedes that the list may include citizens, as the Inquisitor reported Wednesday. He has also warned election officials that “knowingly” helping someone vote illegally could bring aiding-and-abetting charges, The Guardian reported.

Noncitizen voting is a crime and should be prosecuted when it happens. But an election official counting a lawful mail ballot on the schedule state law sets is not doing anything suspicious. When results change late on election night, the explanation is usually in statutes that were on the books before anyone voted.

What responsible people can do

Candidates and party officials should say before Nov. 3, in plain terms, which way their state’s count is likely to move. News organizations should report the share of the expected vote counted along with the margin, and should label early leads for what they are. Voters can look up their own state’s rules in the NCSL table in a few minutes.

None of this predicts who will win. That will be settled by people who have already voted or will vote by Nov. 3. The order in which their ballots are counted is a matter of law, and it should not be treated as a reason to doubt the outcome.

The Inquisitor sent requests for comment to the Pennsylvania and Michigan departments of state, Charles Stewart III of MIT, the National Conference of State Legislatures and Ipsos on Wednesday afternoon, before publication. This piece will be updated with any responses.

Opinion pieces reflect the views of The Washington Inquisitor’s editorial staff.

Image: Earliest dates states allowed mail ballots to be scanned for the 2024 general election; some rules have changed since. CEIR Research Team, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.