The media is spreading chaos because they want chaos.
They are blatantly lying about election night and fearmongering people into thinking Trump will be leading even in reliably blue states well into election night coverage, and therefore he will be able to declare himself the winner and tie everything up in litigation.
This is a bullshit tactic that is patently false. The media is lying and distorting the facts to push a chaos theory that gets people worked up because they FEED off that chaos. They want chaos. It absolutely is better for the ratings than a quiet election night.
They did the same thing eight years ago:
Could Sandy delay the election? (Politico):
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing for Hurricane Sandy to disrupt next week’s elections, agency Administrator Craig Fugate said Monday afternoon.
“We are anticipating that, based on the storm, there could be impacts that would linger into next week and have impacts on the federal election,” Fugate said on a conference call with reporters.
But any potential tinkering with Election Day would bring a bevy of legal issues.
“Our chief counsel’s been working on making sure that we have the proper guidance,” he added. “We’re going through the regulatory policy and making sure all that’s in place and we can support it.”
How Hurricane Sandy Could Spoil Election Day (The New Republic):
Could Hurricane Sandy lead to a constitutional crisis? Since 1845, Congress has mandated that the presidential election take place on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. But no one in the waning days of the Tyler administration anticipated a giant hurricane hitting the East Coast within a week of Election Day. In fact, there is no precedent whatsoever for a natural disaster of this scale before a federal election. A devastating storm, like Sandy, could produce several constitutional and legal crises if voting can’t take place on November 6.
Could Sandy postpone next week's presidential election? Yes, in theory (Daily Mail):
One week before a close election, superstorm Sandy has confounded the presidential race, halted early voting in many areas and led some to ponder whether the election might even be postponed.
It could take days to restore electricity to more than 8 million homes and businesses that lost power when the storm pummeled the East Coast -leading experts to question whether the election can be put back from November 6th.
Could Election Day Be Postponed? (ABC News):
Superstorm Sandy has given rise to suspensions in campaigning by both President Obama and GOP contender Mitt Romney, but could it actually delay Election Day?
There are way more articles I could post, but you get the idea - in 2012, the media drove a panic narrative that Super Storm Sandy could delay the election, or the results, because certain areas of the country were not prepared, or ready, to handle the storm's fallout with the election literally just hours from arriving.
But we all remember 2012. None of what the media predicted manifested. There was no chaos - no delays, not even a significant disruption that cast doubt on who would win. In reality, the biggest issue was New Jersey, whose polls stayed open a bit longer than normal to allow for more voting and, at the end of the day, still went to Obama (though, instead of being called directly after polls closed there, which is the norm, was called for Obama an hour or so later).
No chaos.
To be sure, 2020 is a bit different. There is absolutely justification about how the counting of mail-in ballots in a timely fashion. Most states are honest about the worst-case scenario ... just as they were honest about potential chaos in 2012 with Sandy.
But the media is adding fuel to the fire by spreading misinformation.
On this morning's Meet the Press, Chuck Todd outright LIED about election day. He stated, at the start of the show, that there is a real possibility that the initial returns will have Trump heading in most every state, allowing for him to declare victory because, as Todd stated (paraphrasing) that election day votes are counted first, while mail-in ballots are counted in the subsequent days.
This is a lie. This is a lie. This is a lie.
Only a handful of states begin counting mail-in ballots AFTER polls have closed and none of those states are ones actually being contested (Mississippi and Maryland are two - states that absolutely will be called for Trump and Biden respectively as polls close).
Most every other state can begin the process of counting mail-in ballots days before the election (North Carolina) or as polls OPEN on election day (states like Pennsylvania). It is absolutely false to say states begin counting in-person, day of election day votes first. This is not true for a vast majority of every state.
So, theoretically, as polls CLOSE on election night, a good chunk of these mail-in ballots will be counted.
That doesn't necessarily benefit Trump.
Here is a link where you can view when every state begins counting mail-in ballots.
Yes, it is possible, if these states are close, that we may not know a winner in, say, Pennsylvania for a few days as we wait for all the mail-in ballots to be counted. But the assumption by the media that A) Trump will be leading and B) Trump will have a significant lead is false.
It also doesn't account for states like Florida, who begins validating mail-in ballots
22 DAYS before the election and North Carolina, who do the same
14 DAYS before the election. It's very likely both those states will declare a winner on election night. If Biden wins both states, even if Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin haven't fully counted all their ballots, it will be impossible for Trump to create any narrative he's somehow won - and frankly, with Biden's margins in Wisconsin right now and even Michigan, I suspect those states will be called for Biden on election night as well.
To be sure, states should have a plan in place to resolve any outstanding issues. But the hype of this by the media is unproductive and creating a narrative that we're not going to know the winner for weeks - which plays right into Trump's hands.
The reality: even if some of these states aren't called on election night (which would not be unusual, as Florida, with its narrowest of margins in 2012, wasn't called for Obama until four days
after the election, while, in 2008, Missouri wasn't called for McCain until two weeks after the election), it's still not certain there will be enough to even not allow for Biden to be declared the winner on election night.
But this continued panic is the media playing with emotions and driving chaos for ratings. Just as they did eight years ago with Sandy.
Absolutely, this is a bit more serious, but even Pennsylvania admits they expect to have a significant amount of their mail-in ballots counted on election night. Which could result in the exact opposite effect: Biden leads Trump in initial returns, maybe even by a significant margin, and as same-day voting starts being counted, that lead is slowly chipped away.
In fact, I would wager that is the most likely outcome - not this doomsday scenario where Trump leads in every state because, as I've already shown, mail-in ballots ARE counted first, sometimes days before, election day ballots. Maybe the size of the amount won't make it possible to count all on election day, but if they count most, and Biden still leads, which is very possible, and the outstanding vote is known to be additional mail-in ballots, then Trump has no argument and the networks, utilizing exit polling (exit polls do account for mail-in ballots, though the accuracy is not as strong) likely will end up calling these states for Biden anyway based on the trends and outstanding votes.
Save this post. I believe I am right.
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