There’s an image that I’m starting to see all over Instagram and fb, saying
“delayed election results are not normal, they never have been”.
It seems to be especially popular with trump fans. What is your response to the people posting it? IS this abnormal? If so, why is this happening now?
Posted Nov 10, 2022, 4:05 AM UTC · edited
This happened in 2008. It took 14 days to get initial results which were later reversed on a recount.
And Franken wasn't seated until July. July!
“delayed election results are not normal, they never have been”.
That is a specific claim which could be easily born out by data. The person making the claim is obligated to provide supporting data.
What do I think?
I think it’s stupid
I think it’s stupid
Exactly why it appeals to Trumpers
In no real order, I'd hit them with the following:
One - the tabulating of ballots takes time. It varies from state to state, municipality by municipality.
Two - in some jurisdictions around the country, mail-in ballots are not allowed to be processed until the day of the election. Regardless of when they are received.
Three - Dumbass rules like the one in point 2 are made by Republicans to impede the voting process and give credibility to their conspiracy theories.
Four - any attempts to streamline and improve the voting rules of the country through a federally overseen system are always tanked by, you guessed it, the Republicans.
But seriously, what is the point? MAGA folks are not going to see reason.
The last point is bad, no one wants a monolithic Federal voting system. The fact that elections are decentralized is one of their core security features. You have to compromise 50 different election systems rather than one.
214 million. That's the population of Brazil. Of the eligible voters in that country they had close to 80% turnout in both rounds in this last election.
Nation with a comparable sized population and they handled their election with a federal based system just fine. Nothing precludes local elections happening under the auspices of a federally controlled voting system in practice.
I’m not sure what the total population of Brazil has to do with the claim that decentralized election systems are harder to manipulate and thus provide better security. Nowhere did I say it’d be harder to have a single type of election machine because of our population. It’d be far easier in fact. And it’d be far easier for someone looking to compromise because they’d only have to target one type of machine and one system to impact results nationwide.
I gave the population because Brazil is comparable in size to the US and they had a voter turnout roughly double ours and they handled it with relative ease under a federally controlled voting system.
I said fuckall about goddamn voting machines.
I believe the poster is saying that having consistent rules across all states has been tanked by Republicans.
And what about provisional ballots?
How long does it take to get to those?
First you will need to define "provisional". In my area, Georgia, provisional ballot are what you are given to voters after they check-in at a polling place other than their assigned location. What you might mean are called absentee or just mail-in ballots.
The rule used to be something like you could request your absentee ballot up to 180 days before Election day. Now it is around 79 days. And regardless of when requested, you are supposed to receive it in 3 business days. I don't see why a federally controlled system would be much different.
Dont bother saying anything.
If you like you can congratulate them on finding an excuse to dismiss all future election results if they so wish and then tell them that jesserknight on reddit said that he's not going back to waiting 2 hours in a gymnasium because some old man doesn't understand mail in ballots.
If you are lazy like me you can screenshot this and post it directly to them. Here let me include a personal message.
Hi election deniers. Please fuck off.
Bush vs Gore.
Sixteen states and Washington, D.C., do not allow counting of mail in and absentee votes to begin until the polls close:
Alabama, Alaska, District of Columbia, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
In MD, there were 175,000 mail in ballots cast. They couldn't start counting till 8pm. But if we don't have an answer in 3 hours there is a problem?
How you believe that we shouldn't even start counting mail in votes till after the polls close you are upset if we don't have the results in a few hours isn't realistic.
There’s a zillion variables that determine how long it takes a specific county in a specific state to count its ballots. You don’t have time to learn them and they won’t understand them anyway. This one is one that’s too much trouble to argue with. It’s too much ignorance to penetrate. Let Politico do the work.
What a "Karen" thing to complain about. Can you imagine making this sort of complaint: "delays of any kind are intolerable" in any other regard?
It’s not about delays. It’s about finding excuses to suggest an evil conspiracy.
If Republicans wanted immediate results, they shouldn't have recommended dropping off mail in ballots on Election Day so their ballots would have to be hand counted.
If Republicans wanted immediate results, they would want electronic voting machines.
They should talk to the Manager. Probably good for a coupon or something.
Submit one ballot, suppress someone else’s for free?
Why do they think there are several months between an election and the date that the president takes the oath of office?
Delayed election results are inevitable these days. The greater the turnout the longer it takes to count.
Even conservatives are calling BS on it this time around. Different states have different systems and different counting standards. Does there need to be an overhaul in states that use an archaic method? Absolutely. But that doesn’t make it abnormal.
What's their evidence? Because there's tons of evidence to say that they are, frankly, fucking stupid for repeating such clearly disprovable bullshit.
This is heavily circulating on r/Conservative too and is bolstered by their observation that Florida counted their ballots quickly and DeSantis won big, which in their minds MUST indicate fraud in those other states. Even fellow members were explaining to these people that Florida hadn’t actually finished counting yet and voters actually have through today to cure ballots with problems. Races just aren’t close enough for those ballots to matter.
Florida does have robust mail-in and early voting systems, main reason likely being that the ruling conservative majority once had a huge incentive to capture all those absentee snowbird votes. Of course things have shifted and now they’re trying their hardest to pick and choose who votes. My wife and I both voted by mail in Florida and one of our completed ballots was never seen or heard from again after we mailed them out two weeks before the election (postal worker doing their “patriotic” duty perhaps?) but you don’t see me saying they stole the election and DeSantis is an illegitimate governor.
Florida counted their ballots quickly and DeSantis won big,
Florida is still not done counting and they have a 4 day deadline. They're currently at 99%.
Where the confusion comes in is that results are typically announced long before the counting is done, both historically and this year. This is simply due to the fact that once a certain threshold is reached they can pretty accurately determine who will come out ahead. This year is no different than any other year. Races that are easily predicted are announced early, others have to wait because of doubt.
They're just using selective memory to pretend it is something new. All of the votes weren't even close to being counted on election night in 2016, but Hilary did the honorable thing and conceded because she understands math and trusted the predictions of the experts. Too many states were too close with too much uncertainty in 2020 and the GOP, true to form, used it as a lever to provoke fear.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
There’s an image that I’m starting to see all over Instagram and fb, saying
“delayed election results are not normal, they never have been”.
It seems to be especially popular with trump fans. Why is your response to the people posting it?
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Laugh at them? People who do not know anything about anything and instead choose to learn by Facebook meme or not people you can really argue with meaningfully.
[removed]
That it shows a remarkable ignorance of history.
In the year 1800, the results were delayed by a full 11 months.