Vox Pop - Be skeptical of election results until all votes are tabulated

Vox Pop

We seem slated for a close election next week and it is important that we all know what to expect. We are going to have politicians using quirks of the natural, legal process to sow doubt about the results for their own gain. As voters, we have a responsibility to not get pulled into the drama. Although I don't claim to know who will win next week, there are some predictable events that we can all expect.

1). Elections operate on the municipal level. Local clerks across the state are responsible for tabulating results. Since the number of voters in municipalities vary, the processing time required to tabulate results vary, with more populous areas (Milwaukee County, Dane County) requiring more time than less populated areas. We should expect results later from more populous counties.

2). By law, the state of Wisconsin does not allow processing of ballots prior to election day. Although these can be processed throughout election day, in many polling places they are not able to be processed until after polls close. Absentee ballots are often processed in large bunches at the same time. We should expect that there will be large quantities of votes that are tabulated after the polls close and reported late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. Again, we should expect these to be coming from more populous counties that have more votes to tabulate.

3). Wisconsin conducts a county audit after every election to check results. This includes a randomly selected set of ballots comparing the results from the top race in the election to confirm that the audit reproduces election results. This occurs after every election, regardless of result, to demonstrate election accuracy.

4). Wisconsin elections have paper ballots that are kept following the election and can be fully recounted when needed. A partial recount was requested in 2020 for the presidential election and reproduced the election results.

Ultimately, we can expect similar trends to 2020. Rural votes will be tabulated quicker post election and we will likely see Donald Trump initially leading. Donald Trump will likely claim an election win on Tuesday night when he is ahead as occurred in 2020. This would be before all the votes have been counted. As we head into late Tuesday/early Wednesday, additional legal votes will be processed, mostly from urban areas, tightening the vote tallies and possibly having Kamala Harris overtake Donald Trump and win Wisconsin.

Again, I don't know who will win. However, we would question a football coach who claims to have won the game when leading by 3 at the end of third quarter. We should be similarly skeptical of any claims about the election results until all votes are tabulated.

— Ben Koch, Medford