The certification of the results of presidential elections in the USA has specific deadlines and rules in each state, but everyone must complete the process by December 14, the day when the Electoral College votes to elect the President.
Voting accounting goes through several verification and confirmation processes, being sent by the officers of each county until certified by the secretary of state of each state or by the independent figure of the chief / administrator of elections. The process can take weeks to complete.
No Arizona, for example, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has until November 30 to count the votes and proceed to the certification, in the presence of the governor and the state attorney general.
Already in California, December 11 is the last day that Secretary of State Alex Padilla can prepare, certify and file a declaration of vote from the compilation of votes, having that day to publish the final results on the Secretariat of State website.
This means, as a procedural diagram for The New York Times explains, that the results reported by the states on election night and following hours are not official. The results must be confirmed and certified until a final number is reached.
When margins are too short, several states have an automatic recount of votes.
That’s what happened in 2000 in Florida, when a margin of just 1784 votes between George W. Bush and Al Gore triggered the automatic recount.
Bush’s lead decreased to just 327 after the machine recount, and Al Gore’s campaign then required a manual count in four counties with a Democratic majority.
However, the process took so long that it passed the certification deadlines and, after a succession of legal disputes, the Supreme Court ordered the suspension of the manual recount on December 12. The next day, Al Gore gave up the legal battle and George W. Bush was elected.
Subsequent studies have failed to determine, definitively, who received the most votes in Florida and what caused irregularities in the vote.
Candidates can also request recounts if they dispute the accuracy of the numbers provided, even if the margin of difference is greater. This is a situation that makes a change less likely, when the difference is tens of thousands of votes, although it is not impossible.
Legal contestation of results usually takes place before certification is complete, which in the case of the 2020 presidential election may delay the entire process, given the diversity of legal cases that are already underway.
However, as political scientist Daniela Melo, who teaches at Boston University, explained to Lusa, “there may be a certification, but then the Supreme Court will make a decision that will consider this certification illegal”, which means that “certification is not the definitive moment“.
What happens next depends on state for state, and the state legislature may intervene in the election of voters at the Electoral College who will elect the president on December 14. However, the law in most states (33) states that voters must follow the popular vote.
“The most dangerous for democracy is between now and the 14th. When voters [do Colégio Eleitoral] vote, from then on it will be a fait accompli [facto consumado]”, said Daniela Melo.
These votes are then confirmed by Congress, which opens the new legislative session in January.
The new President’s mandate has to start on January 20, in this case 2021.
If legal disputes drag on and there is no President-elect until the deadline, she will be the leader of the House of Representatives (where Democrats hold the majority), Nancy Pelosi, to be installed as President.
Donald Trump’s campaign initiated several lawsuits to dispute counts in Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, joined a lawsuit in Arizona and called for a recount in Wisconsin.
In Pennsylvania, where Joe Biden passed Donald Trump early on Friday as the votes were counted, the dispute is about receiving postal votes.
Republicans contested the counting of votes stamped by the post office until election day, but which did not reach electoral authorities until the following days.
Democratic voters tended to vote by mail in greater numbers, which led to the counting of these ballots benefiting Joe Biden in decisive states such as Pennsylvania and Georgia.
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