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They Need Extra Time to ‘Count the Votes,’ if You Know What I Mean
The White House has released a pre-emptive statement, telling American citizens not to expect the results of the election until they have time to, um, count the ballots. If you know what I mean.
The midterm election results will not be clear on Election Day and final results won’t arrive for “a few days,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.
Jean-Pierre made the statement during a press conference at the White House on the eve of Election Day. She argued that many states use mail-in ballots and other forms of early voting that often won’t be counted until after the ballots cast in-person on Tuesday.
“We may not know all the winners of elections for a few days. It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner. That’s how this is supposed to work,” Jean-Pierre told reporters.
Voting is managed by local election commissions – run by local elected officials, in towns that The White House has never heard of. The White House does not play any role in counting votes.
At least, I didn’t think that The White House played any role in counting votes. So presuming that they don’t, then why are they releasing this statement? How is this their concern? And how do they know how votes are counted, or when? And why does The White House feel the need to explain how local election commissions do their jobs?
It was not long ago that America was capable of getting election results as quickly as third-world countries – on the same day. Just over the past few elections, all of a sudden it takes days or weeks, instead of hours.
After all, they need time to “count the votes.” If you know what I mean.
Thank goodness The White House cleared that up. That really sets my mind at ease.
Are red lights flashing in anyone else’s head right now?
Published in General
Years ago when I lived in Seattle, I remember that whenever there was a close election, a box of uncounted ballots would be “found” in King county.
Has FoxNews called Arizona for the Democrats yet?
The Patent Office has been stubbornly slow processing my applications for an artificial appendix and a Braille vehicle speedometer but hopefully, the ’24 elections will be using my built-in hanging chad ballot–defaults to either a Democratic or invalid vote when machine-read. I see a huge blue state market.
A Navy man I knew who was born in the Philippines said that he hated Ferdinand Marcos as did everyone in his family and home village. Nevertheless, Marcos won 100% of the vote in the village when re-elected each time. I think that was the inspiration for Dominion software. Wish I had thought of that.
News reports are saying that Maricopa County is already having trouble with some of their machines. Paper ballots don’t fail.
I laughed at the Ruthless Podcast’s election day episode this morning. Josh said it will depend on if the Republican can split King County. Good luck with that.
Gas prices have gone down a little bit so Putin is doing some good work for me.
You aren’t allowed to see the evidence…you are merely a citizen and you do not have standing.
Doc, I don’t know for sure, but I don’t recall that all of the vote-counting was done on election day, in the past. Maybe it was, but that’s not my impression.
Our voting system is bewilderingly complex. I think that the “third-world country” comparison is a poor one. I don’t know how other countries hold their elections.
In our country, we often vote for federal offices, state offices, local offices, and various ballot initiatives, all on the same ballot. My ballot is different from others in my metro area, because, for example:
This may, or may not, be the case in other countries. I don’t know.
My recollection is that it often took quite a while to certify election results, as far back as I can remember. Sometimes, of course, the result is lopsided, so we can be pretty sure of the result even if the counting isn’t done.
I do suspect that the spread of voting by mail has caused delays. Arizona has a lot of voting by mail.
Chain of custody evaporates with mail-in voting. There must be a way to improve that.
I really miss the old machines with the curtain and the little levers that clicked down by each candidate. Those made you feel like you were *voting*. Although I understand they were pretty easy to manipulate.
Now we have the paper ballots you feed into a scanner. Not the same. We don’t have the electronic voting machines here, I really don’t get the point of those at all.
Was #121 when I voted at 9:25 this morning – polls opened at 8.
Three different wards vote at my place – not sure if they each had their own numbering. Only about 3-5 people in line at each table, saw one person get told they had to go to a completely different location to vote (we redistricted the city pretty severely), and one person who made it to the front of the line before they were told they had to register first – Wisconsin has same-day registration. Lien at the registration table was pretty short.
Easy. Every ballot has a thumbprint and DNA sample of the voter. Then you check for
too many matching thumbprints and start checking deeper.
ABC News says that the “Red Mirage” is coming. That is night of GOP leads fade away over time.
At least that is something. Maybe it’s the answer, I don’t know, but what we are doing now is inaccuracy by design.
That invalidates the concept of “secret ballot”
I was a volunteer election poll worker when those mechanical machines were in use. They were pretty straightforward. We tested them in the morning to be sure all the levers and counter wheels worked. Once satisfied we cleared the machines and Reset everything to zero…all under supervision of pollwatchers from both parties. Periodically through the day we’d confirmed the number of voters who cast votes on the machine squared with the number of people who came in. After the voting ended we reopened the machines, read off the totals, and that was that. It was quite simple really.
If anything broke we reverted to paper ballots.
Cambodia’s strongman came close to losing elections a few times. He had to use the court to essentially outlaw his opponents because it’s hard to steal elections. Only in America, where electoral fraud is rampant.
Computers are even easier.
Only for mail-in ballots. If people can’t be bothered to vote in person, maybe that’s the sacrifice they have to make.
I saw a reporter on TV this morning saying that a delay in getting results is a good thing because it means they are taking the time to get it right. And by “get it right” he means . . .
I find it hard to believe that the Democrats are so tone-deaf or out of touch that they don’t appreciate that telling voters “we’ll need several days to count the votes” will be heard by a bunch of people as stating an intention to cheat. They’re feeding the “conspiracy theories” they claim to abhor. They can’t really be that out of touch, can they?
I think they can be, and a lot of their followers will agree with anything they say.
I have heard two explanations.
One is that (when mail-in ballots are a small percentage of total ballots) mail in ballots rarely change the outcome of the in-person results, so there’s no need to rush the counting of mail-in ballots.
The other is that (once mail-in ballots became a significant portion of total ballots, but assuming all legitimate mail-in ballots were on-hand before in-person polling closed) knowing the results of the mail-in ballots before the in-person polls closed provided cheaters with the number of ballots that needed to be stuffed into the incoming in-person poll results. Now however we have seen how much of a problem the mail-in ballots present, especially when those mail-in ballots arrive after the in-person polls have closed, and are counted without decent custody and verification control.
Is that actually true? Certainly in 2000 the Florida recount went on for weeks, though granted that was an unusual case. I suspect that in most recent Presidential elections one candidate conceded by the end of the night, based on some combination of their internal polls plus network news calling the results, and no one paid attention to the fact that official vote counting continued behind the scenes for several days afterward.
Here in California, Gavin Newsom’s re-election was announced at 10 minutes after 8Pm. (The polls had closed at 8Pm.)
Whether this means 2 percent of the vote was in, and they went ahead and judged the results from that, or what, I have no idea.
It takes 30 mins just to drive the paper ballots into the County office from my local polling place, so I have no idea what is going on.
The networks rely on early returns plus exit polling data, is my understanding. As of 11:00 PM the polls have been closed for 3 hours and Newsom is ahead 2.8 million votes to 1.8 million for Dahle. Considering there were over 12 million votes cast for governor in 2018, I’d say they’ve counted less than half the votes so far.
The way the media and the rest of the ruling class in the People’s Republic of California behave, the rest of the state is just a pimple on the butt of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
It’s not like the race was close, the networks could’ve safely called it weeks ago. Newsom wouldn’t have been burning campaign cash on TV ads in Florida if he were even remotely worried about losing this election.
Still, I wonder what his lead would be if Florida’s election procedures were instituted in Cali.
It might not matter that much, so many people who don’t want Newsom have already left.