Kerby Anderson

Election night on November 3 could be much more confusing than any election in modern times. We usually expect to know who our next president will be before we head to bed. One major exception was the 2000 election night that ended with questions about Florida ballots and hanging chads.

The 2020 election night promises to be even more confusing because of mail-in ballots. If the presidential election is close, we won’t know for some time who will occupy the Oval Office in January. In fact, Facebook’s head, Mark Zuckerberg, said their social media platform is “getting people ready for the fact that there’s a high likelihood that it takes days or weeks to count this — and there’s nothing wrong or illegitimate about that.”

But even after a week or so we still might not know the winner, because of mail-in ballots. Nearly two months after the New York primary election, the final tally in the 12^th Congressional District remains a mystery. Originally, Representative Carolyn Maloney was declared the winner by 648 votes. But then the canvassing of 65,000 mailed ballots began, and then lawsuits began to be filed.

Days before the election, the elections office was deluged with applications for absentee ballots. They simply could not process all of the requests. Many ballots were sent to voters late. Those sent to New Yorkers temporarily out of state could not possibly have arrived in time. Then there were problems with postmarks, or none that were put on prepaid mail.

At the moment, Representative Maloney has been declared the winner, although that does not include ballots one judge has ordered to be counted. In the past, we have talked about the possibility of fraud when it comes to mail-in ballots. Here is another factor to consider: government understaffing and government incompetence. This is another reason to reject the current push for mail-in balloting.