Election Day is upon us, and I know what is going to happen. While soothsayers of all stripes have made predictions, a few things are certain to occur.
Watch the headlines Tuesday but keep some perspective. In decades of monitoring elections, these five things happen every single election. Are they nefarious? Do they show the election is crooked?
Elections are messy things. Nothing runs perfectly. Thankfully they aren’t a heavy A380 landing in a 35 knot crosswind, with limited chances of a go-around. These glitches are usually fixed. Here are five things that will happen Tuesday.
1. Running out of paper ballots.
Some county somewhere is going to face a surge of voters far higher than historic norms. Election officials must buy ballots. Printers charge hefty printing and shipping fees for the ballots. That means election officials cannot simply order double or triple historic needs. But history gets made from time to time, and ballots run out. It will happen Tuesday, somewhere. It always does.
Most states have procedures in place for backup ballots. While not ideal, printing more ballots on site is better than disenfranchisement. So too are provisional ballots that are laying around and counted as regular ballots. Limited tangible supply is one of the downsides of paper ballots. The upside of paper ballots is that they can be recounted easier than memory bits in a close election.
2. Voters Show they Already Voted
One of the stranger things that happen every election is that someone goes to vote and the records show they already cast an absentee ballot. There are a couple of possible explanations here. One is that someone cast an early ballot in the name of that voter. All the more reason to have a voter ID requirement for mail ballots. Mail ballots are the most vulnerable way to run an election. The Postal Service regularly delivers my neighbors mail to me. I don’t trust them to get much right.
Another possibility is shoddy voter history data entry. It is a mighty task to properly record voter history and it is one of the least reliable parts of our election system. Some states do it by scanning bar codes in sign in books next to signatures. The folks doing this task are, shall we say, sometimes focus challenged. One poorly aimed scanner gun and Charlie L. Smith voted instead of Charlie M. Smith. Voter history can be inaccurately recorded, tripping a chain reaction of false conclusions all around.
3. Machines Flipping Votes!
Those darn machines. Every election they seem to want you to vote for the opposite person you want. Around noon, social media will be full of vote flipping stories. Ask Dolly Parton’s sister.
Most always, this is a calibration error. The good news is election workers can easily fix it. Just report the problem and they can recalibrate the touch screen. If they are recalibrated and the vote flipping still happens, report it again and call the state election official in charge. Worry about posting it on social media AFTER you take steps to get the problem fixed.
4. Election Night Winners Become Day After Losers
This is the single most destabilizing aspect of American elections. In the United Kingdom, the candidates appear on stage on election night and a winner is announced. We can’t do that in California or Colorado because those states have mail elections with crazy return deadlines. That’s what the Supreme Court case was all about this year, putting deadlines on mail returning. Mail ballots with late counting is a cause of this problem. Go to bed, and by morning there is a new winner.
Florida fixed this problem. You can read all about how in Worst to First. For starters, all mail ballots must be received in Florida by Election Day. Next, mail ballots are opened and tallied before election day. The results are secret and have never been leaked ahead of time. Florida made it a serious crime to release results early. And now we get results in Florida on election night.
Congress can help fix this by amending federal laws setting election day, such as 3 U.S.C. 1, to require all ballots to be received by election day.
5. Long Lines Somewhere
Somewhere there will be long lines to vote. Depending on where they are, CNN will cover them.
Early voting was supposed to eliminate this issue but it hasn’t everywhere. It remains problematic in states with lengthy ballot questions. That’s another reason to eliminate wild referendum power. Long lines aren’t some conspiracy to disenfranchise anyone, though the Left has been attracted to that crazy argument for decades. They even filed lawsuits over it. Naturally the lawsuits failed.
Elections are where we vest the consent of the governed. It stinks to be on the losing end of an election, but as long as the rules and laws were followed, our system is designed to endure. As long as.
Consent of the governed creates a “peaceable kingdom.” It creates domestic tranquility and a land so different from other places and other times. It is an American treasure, and no matter which side of the outcome you are on, it is what gives hope that this great Republic will endure for generations.