Making sense of all this madness!

You have questions. That’s good. Let’s get them answered.

Election night has now stretched into election week, and Americans are glued to the agonizingly slow march toward 270 electoral votes. It’s been a weird election, appropriate for this weird year, being observed by a uniquely mistrustful viewing public. You’re probably seeing a LOT of claims, ranging from accusations of fraud, to concerns about people’s ballots not being counted.

Here’s a list of the main points of confusion we’re seeing in the newsroom, and some explanation for what you’re seeing:

“Trump was SO far ahead in so many states, and now all of a sudden he’s losing?!”

This is the situation we’ve seen in the most hotly contested swing states, and here are the reasons why:

1. The first counties to report results are typically the smaller, more rural ones, because they don’t have as many ballots to count, nor as many polling places to close up and get tabulated. Those counties tend to vote Republican. In Nevada, for example, the first two counties to release results were Lyon and Churchill counties, both deeply red regions, despite relatively tiny populations. If you had looked at Nevada’s results at that point, Trump was absolutely annihilating Biden in Nevada. The only two counties in Nevada with populations in the six figures or higher are Washoe and Clark, both of which trend more strongly Democrat. Those counties are still counting up their ballots. So as they get through their counts, the numbers from Nevada will shift in Biden’s direction. That’s what we’re seeing in the swing states: the biggest counties with the most Democrats are the last to report, making it appear that Biden is getting a “comeback win” when in reality, if all results were held and then released at once, it wouldn’t look that way at all.
2. Mail-in ballots are much slower to be counted, since much of the process has to be done by hand (opening envelopes, verifying signatures, etc.), compared to the digital process of in-person voting. Also, some mail-in ballots are still arriving at county headquarters (which is allowed in Nevada, as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day). So most of the “late” results that have been released are coming from mail-in ballots. And most mail-in ballots are coming from Democrats.
   
   Why, you ask?
   
   Many Republican campaigns discouraged voters from casting their ballots through the mail-in system. There have been various accusations from the GOP and the Trump campaign about the mail-in system being vulnerable to fraud. So, more Republicans chose to cast their ballots in person. As mentioned above, in-person votes get released faster, so the early returns were showing more strongly for Trump. As mail-in ballots get tabulated, that’s why it looks like it’s a Biden wave. Once again, if everything were released at once, it wouldn’t look that way at all.

“I sent in my ballot, but the website/Ballottrax doesn’t show that it was counted.”

If you’re voting in Nevada, and you’ve been checking to make sure your vote was counted, you might have seen that your ballot was “received” or “completed” but not yet that it was counted.

That’s because all results are considered “unofficial” until the official “Canvass of the Vote,” which makes results official. This year, that happens on November 16. Election officials say not to worry about your online status; it’ll show your vote as “counted” once the results are made official. The website just hasn’t updated with that information yet.

Some of the websites might not show that it’s received yet at all. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t received; according to election officials, that just means it’s not reflected on the website yet. If you’re really concerned, the best bet is to call your county registrar.

HOWEVER– there ARE some mail-in ballots that have not been counted because they require a “cure,” meaning they weren’t signed, the signature doesn’t match, or there’s some other issue (damage, etc.). County officials contact those voters to get the issue resolved, but there is a deadline to make that happen.

To check if your mail-in ballot was received (in Nevada), you can use these links:

https://www.nvsos.gov/votersearch/

https://nevada.ballottrax.net/voter/

Or, you can contact your county’s registrar of voters and ask. Don’t be afraid to make a phone call; there are people answering the lines for this exact reason.

“There are thousands of fake ballots/dead people are voting/illegal immigrants are voting/ballots are being thrown away/people are voting twice/generally the integrity of our election process is garbage.”

There aren’t, and it isn’t.

In the last general election, the Nevada Secretary of State (who is a Republican, by the way), found fewer than a dozen instances of attempted election fraud. Out of more than a million recorded votes. The numbers are the same in other states. Election officials of every party, race, creed, religion, gender, and sexual preference agree unequivocally: there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

This isn’t a party conspiracy; elections are run by individual people in diverse counties across the country. There is no one person in charge of counting ballots, and no one person (or one party) with the power to affect the integrity of the system in that way.

Keep in mind that election fraud is a felony. Getting caught has serious repercussions, with very few potential rewards if successful, unless it’s done in the tens of thousands. It’s hard to imagine tens of thousands of individuals being willing to forge signatures or attempt to vote twice, and risk felony convictions just to influence an election in a jointly agreed-upon way. That kind of coordinated effort is honestly just not realistic.

Now, of course no system is perfect. There are issues on a very small scale. Every now and then a voter will be caught attempting to vote twice. There’s usually one or two stories of people being turned away at the polls for one reason or another. But presidential elections are decided by votes in the thousands, not in the single digits.

If someone is trying to convince you that one documented example of voter fraud means there must be hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes, then you should ask yourself why they want you to believe that.

And finally, a note on propaganda:

At the end of the day, the integrity of our election system is the absolute foundation of American stability as a democracy. There is nothing more sacred than the freedom to cast a vote, and trust that whatever the voters decide will be implemented, and power transferred peacefully. Shaking the country’s confidence in that system, without evidence, is fundamentally un-American. It’s also EXACTLY what the FBI warned us a few weeks back would happen, from other countries attempting to undermine the American election. Don’t let them win.