(NewsNation) — Midterms are Tuesday, which means that within about 24 hours, we’ll all know which party will be set to control the House and Senate during the next two years, right? No. Actually, there is a good chance we won’t know, at least not who will control the Senate.
Every network is preparing for over-the-top election night coverage, including this one. And I’m looking forward to it.
While the House looks to be close to a lock, returning to a Republican majority, all eyes will be on the Senate, which is exceptionally close, as are many of the governor’s races.
The Senate may come down to three very hotly contested Senate races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona. And if all or even two of those races are as close as many expect them to be, there’s one thing that’s almost guaranteed: We will not know who will control the Senate for days.
Under Georgia election law, if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote Nov. 8, the Senate race will go into a runoff four weeks later on Dec. 6, between the two top vote getters. For now, there is a third candidate, Libertarian Chase Oliver, who’s polling at about 1.6%. That could mean he gets enough votes to prevent either Herschel Walker or Warnock from getting to 50%, as happened in both Senate races in 2020, where there were runoffs.
Then there’s Pennsylvania, which according to the polls is a dead even race between Dr. Mehmet Oz and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. Here’s the issue. For whatever reason, Pennsylvania does not allow any counting of mail-in voting until voting on Election Day has started, which means election workers will have to sort through more than a million mail-in ballots. That will take days to complete.
In Arizona, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Bill Gates, a registered Republican, held a news conference Monday to address false election narratives to preempt attacks on the integrity of Arizona’s vote, which also may take several days to count.
“We’re not going to have final results on election night. The problem is that people out on social media and elsewhere will take the fact that we don’t have final results on election night or early the next day as somehow proof of fraud or allowing that people can start, you know, rigging the election or something like that. And that’s simply not the case,” Gates said.
Remember that you heard him say that before results are in. Now why would people think it should be or must be finished by election night? Because people such as Rudy Giuliani are suggesting it already.
“Now, they had the results in France in eight hours. If we can’t count the vote in eight hours, start wondering,” he said. “I will.”
Putting aside that in France they have only one election on the ballot generally, here, we have many elections on a single ballot.
The only person who should be wondering after six hours or whatever are the ones who don’t understand how our system works, what the rules are, how votes are counted.
Look, if you don’t like the way we count votes, push every state to allow election officials to start tabulating mail-in votes as soon as they come in. But the preemptive doubting of results because it takes time is either just an intentional bad faith way to question results or ignorance.
If it’s close, it will take time. Period.
And the candidate with the most votes in the end after any recount regardless of party, should be the new senator or the new governor or the new member of Congress. To suggest something fishy is happening because we have to wait a day or two or maybe even a week to get the final numbers isn’t just irresponsible. It can be a gambit to try to cheat and no one should want that.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not of NewsNation.