This story was written by Teen Vogue's 2024 Student Correspondents, a team of college students and recent graduates covering the election cycle from key battleground states.
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Early voting in the 2024 election has commenced with record turnout in battleground states, as Kamala Harris’s and Donald Trump’s campaigns try to persuade the small number of undecided voters with stump speeches and advertising blitzes. Polls show them swapping off tiny leads in these critical states, mostly within the margin of error, and that could spell trouble for people who want to know who’s going to be their next president on election night.
“We need to stop talking about Election Day or election night in this country and start talking about election season,” said Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United Democracy Center, an election rights advocacy organization.
With a razor-close race and efforts underway to use lawsuits to change election processes in key states, election experts and voting rights advocates say that we are unlikely to know the results by election night’s end. Those experts aren’t worried about how long it might take and don’t think people should be either, explaining that the election process is working in the time it takes. But legal fights led by members of the election denial movement have advocates concerned about the undermining of democracy and the threat of political violence.
What are the reasons for the delays? Are they a cause for concern?
Election experts and advocates say that delays because of mail-in ballots and the tight race are normal. In key swing states like Pennsylvania and Arizona, state law mandates a recount if there is a particularly tight margin between the candidates. Delays because of mail-in ballots due to the tight race happened in 2020, with Trump and his allies requesting recounts, notes Zachary Peskowitz, a political science professor at Emory University. While Americans may have a projected winner by election night, they may not have a full tally for days afterward.
“So, if you see that the election is undecided by the night of November 5, that does not mean there is fraud in the election,” says Claire Finkelstein, founder of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania.
The prevalence of absentee and mail-in ballots could slow the process because it takes time for them to arrive and be counted. An absentee ballot allows voters to drop off their ballot at a specific location, while a mail-in option allows voters to cast a ballot that is delivered by mail. These types of ballots surged during the pandemic, which slowed down counting efforts. Thirty-two states will accept and count these ballots as long as they’re received on or before Election Day, while 18 others plus Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Washington, DC, will accept them if they’re received after Election Day but postmarked on or before, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many Americans are expected to vote this way in 2024.
“I think that a lot of people expect our process to be instant and when you're working with millions of people, that just will not be the case,” says Tori McFarland from the New Georgia Project, a voting rights advocacy nonprofit.
What kind of challenges are underway in battleground states?
Election certification is a step-by-step process with the potential for legal challenges throughout. Election officials count votes before, on, or in the days after Election Day. In a number of states, the counting of absentee and mail-in ballots can’t start until the polls close on election night. After the count is done, those results are certified locally and statewide no later than December 11. Certification means that election officials believe their voting totals are accurate.
A selected group of electors from each state form the Electoral College to vote on December 17 for president and vice president based on the candidates that won the state. All states except two follow a winner-take-all model, in which the candidates who won the popular vote get all that state’s electors. In Nebraska and Maine, the electoral votes are divided between the state popular vote winner and the popular vote winner in each congressional district.
Voting rights advocates point to recent attempts by Georgia’s Republican-majority state election board to change local county certification and ballot counting rules that would require poll workers to count every single paper ballot by hand. Trump applauded Georgia’s state election board in a rally on August 3, saying they’re doing “a great job,” even though Georgia’s state election board member Janelle King told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “this has never been a partisan issue.” King pointed out that it was a Republican-led group that initially challenged the board’s new rules.
After outrage ensued from state Democrats and Republicans alike, Fulton County judge Thomas Cox declared the new election rules “illegal, unconstitutional, and void.” on October 16, the second day of early voting in Georgia. Republicans have filed an appeal and the decision is now up to Georgia’s Supreme Court.
In Nebraska, Trump and his allies tried to pressure state lawmakers into changing its system to make the distribution of electoral votes winner-take-all instead of by congressional district. The second congressional district near Omaha trends blue and could be a tie-breaking vote if either Trump or Harris receives 269 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Nebraska won’t be changing its system for this election, even after pressure from Trump.
“They're trying to change the rules and create chaos so they can overturn a close result. It's plain as day. There's nothing hidden about this strategy and it's not working,” says Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of Fair Fight Action, a voting rights advocacy organization created by Stacey Abrams.
What other threats are experts concerned about?
Election experts are concerned that normal, understandable delays in the certification process could be fodder for disinformation from election deniers. “My fear is that there will be people who try to take advantage of that delay to claim that something is wrong, to claim that the election was rigged or was fraudulent or isn't trustworthy,” says Lydgate.
Election deniers have amplified numerous false claims about election security. One of the claims is that non-citizens are voting in large numbers during this year’s election, despite there being laws in place that explicitly make it illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. Top Republicans, including Texas governor Greg Abbott, have led the effort to remove potential non-citizens from voter lists.
Advocates also point to mass voter challenges and the refusal to certify election results as potentially disenfranchising voters. In most states, private citizens can challenge the eligibility of prospective voters, which can get someone thrown off the voting rolls. Critics of mass challenges, like Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan voting rights advocacy organization, say the challenges are a form of voter suppression. “Some of these purges happening in the states are targeting young people because they know young people are fired up about government, they are fired up about politics, and they want to shut them out,” Stewart says.
Mass voter challenges have increased since 2020, thanks to efforts by conservative organizations and private citizens. One such organization, True the Vote, has said they are acting independent of party affiliations. The challenges are happening across the country and in swing states like Nevada, where a lawsuit aiming to purge over 11,000 voters from the roll was dismissed after intervention by the American Civil Liberties Union.
There are mechanisms in place to ensure elections are certified, but advocates worry about frivolous lawsuits causing potential delays and disruptions ahead of that crucial December 11 deadline. Sophia Lin Lakin, ACLU’s Voting Rights Director, says these lawsuits give the impression that certification is a voluntary, rather than a legally mandated, act.
Election experts are also preparing for the possibility of political violence. Trump hasn’t given a straightforward answer about committing to a peaceful transfer of power and has repeatedly talked about punishing his political adversaries. Trump has also played into a revisionist history of the insurrection on January 6, 2021, painting the event as a “day of love.” Finkelstein devised plans to quell any potential violence during a recent event urging state and local officials to coordinate with local law enforcement and community leaders.
Voting rights advocacy organizations and election experts have been pushing against disinformation with lawsuits, voter registration information, and polling about people’s trust in the democratic process.
“No matter what is top of mind for you, paying attention to who has stood up for our freedom to vote, has made sure it's protected, that has to be a part of what voters pay attention to this fall,” says Lydgate.
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