An early indicator of which candidate is performing higher will come between 7 pm and eight pm Eastern time (midnight and 1 am GMT) when polls shut in the key battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina. Both states are aggressive for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
In November 2020, when Americans final went to the polls to elect a president, it took 4 days after voting closed for Joe Biden to be declared the winner. This was largely because of razor-thin margins in the essential battleground states, which resulted in some recounts, in addition to massive numbers of mail-in ballots that needed to be counted after election day. There was the added problem of this whole course of being carried out amid a world pandemic.
Since then, some states have modified their election legal guidelines to hurry up the election rely. But whereas it could not take as lengthy this time spherical, one factor we are able to be certain of is {that a} winner will not be identified on election evening itself.
There isn’t any set nationwide time for voting to start on the morning of November 5. Most states will start voting at 7 am of their native time, with others beginning as early as 5 am or as late as 10 am. Voting will begin at quite a lot of instances in some states, similar to New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Washington the place that is determined by totally different counties or municipalities.
Polls shut at a spread of instances throughout the nation, too. Voting will finish as early as 6 pm US Eastern time (11 pm GMT) in Indiana and Kentucky, whereas polls in Hawaii and Alaska, the westernmost states, do not shut till midnight US Eastern time (5 am GMT).
An early indicator of which candidate is performing higher will come between 7 pm and eight pm Eastern time (midnight and 1 am GMT) when polls shut in the key battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina. Both states are aggressive for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and if the former is asserted the victor in both, then the contest will pivot in her favour.
The subsequent key second may happen between 8 pm and 9 pm Eastern time (1 am and a pair of am GMT) when voting ends throughout the so-called blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
However, it’s unlikely {that a} winner will be declared in any of those states straightaway. By 10 pm Eastern time (3 am GMT), polls will have closed in two different important swing states, Arizona and Nevada. Several elements may hinder results being introduced in the hours instantly after voting ends.
In Arizona, for instance, state legal guidelines enable voters to drop their accomplished poll papers off at the polling station on election day or the day prior – one thing that not all states do. However, these “late early” ballots can’t be processed till after voting ends.
Pennsylvania is arguably the most prized swing state that each the Democratic and Republican campaigns are vying for. The state has 19 electoral votes, the most of any battleground state, so the victor will most likely win the electoral school (the group of officers that elect the president primarily based on the vote in every state) and thus additionally the presidency.
But Pennsylvania doesn’t enable election staff to course of mail ballots till 7 am native time on election day, which may imply the end result takes longer than 24 hours after polls near be made identified.
That stated, Alauna Safarpour, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg College, doesn’t suppose the wait will be so long as it was 4 years in the past. Writing for The Conversation on October 29, she stated that it was “highly likely” that fewer Pennsylvanians would select to vote by mail this time round.
“A smaller proportion of voters opted to vote by mail in the 2022 midterm election than in the 2020 general election, and that trend is likely to continue in 2024”, she says.
Two extra essential states, Michigan and Nevada, have additionally made adjustments to the election rely since 2020. These states now allow poll papers to be processed upfront of polling day. On the different hand, the potential of North Carolina to course of votes forward of the election has been made harder because of the injury not too long ago brought on by Hurricane Helene. This could result in additional delays.
In Wisconsin, vote counting in two of the state’s greatest counties – Milwaukee and Dane – can even be notably sluggish. Milwaukee and Dane counties are each vital city centres with a mixed inhabitants of round 1.5 million individuals. The margin in these counties will be vital to the lead to Wisconsin and the presidential race total.
There are issues that sure home gamers may search to frustrate and delay election results in the important swing states.
In January 2020, for instance, numerous Republicans in Congress objected to results in Pennsylvania and Arizona – states that had been each received by Biden.
And in seven swing states, individuals falsely claiming to be members of the Electoral College tried to declare Trump as the winner of their state. Their votes had been despatched to Congress to be counted alongside these of the true electors, with some Congress members arguing that the new slate of electoral votes solid doubts over the official lead to sure states.
In 2023, a Trump marketing campaign lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, pleaded responsible in Georgia to his function in subverting the election.
Norman Eisen, Samara Angel, and Clare Boone, who’re all fellows at the Brookings Institution suppose tank, have offered an in depth evaluation of how this state of affairs may be repeated in 2024. They level to nefarious methods that would be utilised to confuse results by refusing to certify elections at the “county level”.
For instance, three election deniers – Rick Jeffares, Janice Johnston, and Janelle King – maintain the steadiness of energy in Georgia’s state election board. They have collectively devised new guidelines that enable vote certification to be paused whereas investigations are launched into alleged “irregularities”.
Eisen, Angel, and Boone assert that whereas “these attempts will likely meet the same fate as prior efforts, they could still stoke uncertainty and distrust.” So, given the existence of those threats and the undeniable fact that polls present a lifeless warmth, we will most likely not know the election’s winner for at the very least a couple of days.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DNA workers and is revealed from PTI)
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