The National Conference of State Legislators posted these guidelines for when mail-in votes are counted by state.
What they make clear is that a lot of very important states, including Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, begin counting mail-in votes on election day or even after the polls close(!) on election day.
It seems pretty obvious, especially given that we lost one Presidential election because the SCOTUS stepped in and overrode the state on whether all votes should be counted, that if any of these four states is close, and takes 1-2 weeks to count, it opens us up for another ruling like that (or the election going to the House-by-delegation vote). It seems especially obvious since this President has long said he won’t accept the results of the election.
It seems painfully obvious that relying on THIS patchwork systems, even if the Govs and SOSs of many of these states are Democrats, is, for lack of a better word, STUPID.
Progressives have an issue because sometimes they think that just because a law should work as intended, they believe it, and are shocked, shocked I tell you, when Republicans are dishonest and upend things.
Yes, it sucks, cornavirus is still a thing. But where did this idea come from? And even more, why did we push vote by mail without pushing individual states with unclear or problematic laws to make changes? In Illinois, for instance, ballots aren’t counted until 7pm election day. Dems control the state and could easily have made better election law allowing early counting/reporting when polls close. Biden is PROBABLY OK there, but what if in person returns heavily favor Rs down state, and Trump is winning as of midnight?
The larger question is why, when it became obvious coronavirus is a thing, were Democratic state legislators in Democratic states asleep at the wheel and did not anticipate shoring up the election reporting law and technologies?