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      'Democracy is broken': state races aim to undo decade of Republican map-rigging

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      The small farming communities of Wisconsin’s 32nd state senate district, with names like Romance and Avalanche, sit nestled along the Mississippi River. It’s within these rural towns that millions of political dollars are pouring into small counties to influence a local race for state senators who are paid a far more humble amount.
      That’s because in Wisconsin, like several other states this year, both Democrats and Republicans are trying to rack up seats in the state legislatures to hold influence over the political maps which are redrawn every 10 years after the decennial census count.
      “One race should not have this kind of significance,” says Ben Wikler, the Democratic state party chairman tasked with wrestling back majority rule in a state where Democrats won 54% of the overall assembly vote in 2018, but won just over 36% of the seats. “But democracy in Wisconsin is broken.”
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      Republicans asserted their dominance in 2010 by targeting 107 state legislative seats in 16 key states through a $30m national strategy appropriately called REDMAP. It worked: the hi-tech maps the GOP produced have kept every one of those swing-state chambers red throughout this decade, even in years when Democratic candidates won more votes.
      Legislatures in these states, contrary to popular opinion, then worked quickly to undermine collective bargaining, erode voting rights, enact draconian new limits on reproductive rights, refused to expand Medicaid and much more.
      But if Republicans flip the open seat in Wisconsin’s 32nd district – carried by a Democrat in 2018 by just 56 votes – they could block the Democratic governor’s agenda and claim complete control over drawing the next decade of legislative and congressional maps. They could cement their majority in the legislature, and continue implementing restrictions on voting like they are this year, potentially impacting which way Wisconsin goes in the presidential election.
      “It’s all on the line,” Wikler says. “Imagine that? It can be a lot to run for local office and feel like the future of your state and maybe even the electoral college rests on your race.”
      While races for the White House and control of the US Senate demand the largest headlines and the wildest fundraising sums, the stakes of America’s down-ballot races are huge. In three states in particular, Texas, Wisconsin and North Carolina, these local races will determine nothing less than the next decade of the states’ politics, and also influence the electoral college state of play into the 2030s.
      “Collin county, Texas, and outside Dallas, Houston, Waco, even,” says Jessica Post, who leads the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “Overland Park, Kansas. Livonia, Michigan. Those are the places that will change the country.”
      North Carolina: ‘They know what’s at stake’
      Just how important are these district lines? A 2016 report by the Electoral Integrity Project at Harvard measuring the health of American democracy gave North Carolina a seven on a scale of 100, the worst in the nation, and a rating in line with Iran and Venezuela. North Carolina Republicans locked themselves in power, then enacted a “monster” voter suppression bill that targeted black voters with “surgical” precision. They passed the infamous transgender bathroom bill. And when voters elected a Democratic governor in 2016, they curtailed his powers in a shocking lame-duck session.
      Those maps not only kept Republicans in power with fewer votes, it allowed them to command 10 of North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts, more than 70%, again, even when voters preferred Democratic candidates.
      Chart showing North Carolina voters voted for Democrats but Republicans had the majority in the state house.
      State Democrats broke the GOP’s gerrymandered monopoly in 2018, when they gained two seats in the state senate and nine in the house. Then, the following year, a North Carolina court tossed out the map, calling it an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander that violated the state constitution. A new, fairer map was introduced – but it is now up for replacement.
      The state elections this year are the last chance for Democrats to win a seat at the table for next year’s redistricting. The new, fairer map will be gone. If the GOP wins both chambers, Democratic governor Roy Cooper can’t veto the Republican plan.
      “We’re going to have maybe 15 races where we’ve spent half a million dollars, just on the Democratic side, for a [state senate] job that pays $14,000 a year,” says state Representative Graig Meyer, who has led Democratic recruitment efforts to win back at least one chamber of the North Carolina legislature ahead of redistricting. “It’s all about the maps.”
      Meyer and state Democrats made a strategic shift as they recruited candidates. Instead of seeking out veteran Democratic officeholders – quite likely a “slightly older than middle-aged white guy who was pretty boring,” Meyer says – they looked for people with deep community connections and a high degree of emotional intelligence. As a result, the ensuing slate is younger and features more women and candidates of color.
      That’s the case here in state senate district 18, which includes Franklin county, in central North Carolina, and also some of the growing far outer suburbs of Raleigh. Rising home prices in the capital region pushed more families into these once quiet rural towns. Population shifts, newcomers from the north, and now a newly drawn state senate map that now reaches deeper into the outer Raleigh rings in Wake county could bring even more change.
      In 2018, Republican state senator John Alexander held this seat by just 2,639 votes. When the court mandated a new map, however, the new district that had been carefully crafted to tilt red no longer included Alexander’s home. This newly open seat is now far more blue-leaning, and one of the seats Democrats see as a must-flip. In almost any scenario, if Democrats are to take the senate, the road runs through these towns of Zebulon and Wake Forest.
      “It’s a lot of pressure,” says Democratic senate nominee Sarah Crawford. “If I lose, I might have to consider moving out of state. I might not be able to show my face. It’s about the future of North Carolina. It’s about the next decade.”
      The mother of two and nonprofit executive said the skewed maps have taken a toll on the state.
      “In a 50/50 state, you shouldn’t have one party with an extreme majority over another,” Crawford says. “What it’s meant for North Carolina is that public education has suffered. We haven’t expanded Medicaid. Now we have a whole new layer of inaction with the Covid-19 pandemic. All of these bad things have come out of gerrymandering.”
      Just over an hour west sits the newly redrawn 31st senate district, encompassing the rural, tobacco environs surrounding Winston-Salem. This district has changed dramatically as well – from a Republican plus-18 seat to just a Republican plus-four on the new map. For the last decade, the only action has come in heated Republican primaries, followed by a November coronation.
      “We haven’t had a history of competitive elections,” says Terri LeGrand, the Democratic challenger. But this seat is winnable. The new district not only cuts deeper toward blue Winston-Salem, it includes 20 new precincts – almost all of them Democratic-leaning – that had been buried inside a neighboring Republican district.
      “My opponent is on record, very open about the fact that she supports gerrymandering. She has absolutely no problem with it. So, it’s not something that we want to leave to chance.”
      Republicans aren’t gambling, either. Millions in dark money from Republican donors have been funneled into North Carolina through something called the Good Government Coalition. It is registered to an address at a UPS store in suburban Virginia, according to Raleigh television station WRAL, and the custodian of records is listed as Matthew Walter – formerly the president of the Republican State Legislative Committee, which pioneered the party’s REDMAP efforts in 2010.
      The funds have gone toward negative ads being hurled against LeGrand, for example, incorrectly suggesting that she supports defunding the police. Similar ads have targeted other Democratic contenders in close districts, in a strategy mimicking REDMAP ads that identified a hot-button local issue, then buried mailboxes under a weeks-long avalanche of misleading negative ads.
      “It’s grinding and vitriolic,” LeGrand says. “They’ve thrown everything at me because they know what’s at stake.”
      Texas: ‘It’s not a red state. It’s a suppression state’
      Deep in the upper-middle-class suburbs north-east of Dallas are the well-manicured towns neighboring the ultra-wealthy enclaves that George W Bush and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban call home. Here, Brandy Chambers holds one of the nine keys to Democratic hopes of flipping the Texas house for the first time in nearly two decades.
      White people, for example, make up just over 40% of all Texans, according to 2019 census figures, yet still control nearly 70% of the state’s congressional and state legislative seats. In 2018, Texas Republicans won just over 50% of the statewide vote for Congress, but nevertheless won two-thirds of the seats.
      That could change in 2021, and the 112th district could make all the difference. Nine seats separate Democrats from winning an all-important ticket to the redistricting table next year. They are increasingly competitive in Texas and had been able to flip 12 seats in the 2018 midterms.
      If they succeed, Democrats would influence the drawing of as many as 39 congressional districts gerrymandered by the GOP dating back to the early 2000s redraw, which divided liberal Austin into four districts with four conservatives. There could also be a strong impact on national politics, because Texas could receive at least three new seats in Congress following census reapportionment next year.
      A Democratic state house would provide a brake on voter suppression efforts that sunk Texas to 50th in voter turnout in 2018 and limited massive counties the size of New England states to one dropbox each this fall.
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      “It’s not a red state. It’s a suppression state, and by God, my governor and my attorney general are doing their damndest to keep it that way,” Chambers says. “But when Texas goes blue, we take our 38 to 41 electoral votes with us, and then there’s no math in which a Republican can win the White House without Texas. If they draw the maps? We could be stuck like chuck for another decade.”
      According to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which rates state legislative races Moneyball-style, with an eye toward pushing donations toward the most meaningful races to impact redistricting, Texas’s 112th district is the most valuable in the state. “I was able to get so close in a historically very red district,” Chambers tells me. “If my race goes, a couple other races go, and we get a new House majority.”
      This year, determined Texans have withstood suppression efforts and set turnout records. More than seven million voted early, and numbers were highest in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and the surrounding environs that mirror the fast-growing, wealthy suburbs that have turned against the Republicans and Donald Trump.
      “The story this year is the Texas voter overcoming these obstacles inspired by the women by and large who are running for the Texas house,” says Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman who lost a Senate battle to Ted Cruz in 2018, but has organized nightly phone banks aimed at flipping the chamber. “I’ve never seen this level of organization and capitalization and strategic deployment of resources in my life.” More

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      in US Politics

      Lone Star turn: Kamala Harris campaigns in Texas in bid to flip state

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      Jesus Quintanilla, 20, from San Juan on the US-Mexico border, and his family had packed into their car and lined up outside the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley campus to hear vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
      They were turned away after being informed it was invitation-only at the voter-mobilization event.
      Undeterred, Quintanilla crawled under a fence and after getting scolded by the Secret Service found a spot where he could watch.
      Harris didn’t risk saying explicitly that she was there last Friday to flip Texas in the election, she left that to state Democratic luminaries and her former rivals for the presidential nomination, Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro, who came to stump for her and see this border community as key.
      She flew into nearby McAllen, which is most likely to ring a bell in the wider world for Trump-era scenes of trauma. It was in the city that border agents separated migrant children from their families and caged them under hardline immigration policies, some not to see their parents again to this day.
      The area has also been hit hard by coronavirus.
      At 4.43pm, a waving, beaming Harris sashayed on stage in jeans, blazer and her now-signature Converse sneakers with “2020” on the heel, to exuberant cheering and Mary J Blige’s Work That blasting from speakers.
      “They often criticize you for your skin tone, wanna hold your head high,” the R&B lyrics blared to about 200 vehicles gathered for the drive-in rally from various parts of the predominantly Hispanic region known as the Rio Grande Valley. More

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      in US Politics

      How many Americans have voted in the presidential election – and how?

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      The US presidential election is on track to have the highest voter turnout in more than a century, reflecting the high stakes in the race between Donald Trump and his Democrat challenger, Joe Biden.
      Huge increases in early voting can be tracked, in part, to sharp political divisions among Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic. In a country where even mask-wearing to prevent the spread of Covid-19 has become a partisan issue, many want to limit the risk of infection by avoiding packed polling places on Tuesday.
      Here is what we know about US voting thus far, based on data available late on Sunday afternoon.
      How many people have voted?
      Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who runs the US Elections Project, said 93,131,017 people had voted as of Sunday. In the entire 2016 election, 136.5 million people voted, CNN said, so turnout is already more than two-thirds that number. The voting-eligible population – people who should be able to vote if registered – is 239,247,182.
      Can this election set a record?
      McDonald predicted that around 150 million Americans may vote, comprising 65% of eligible voters. That would be the highest turnout in percentage terms since 1908. However, many states are already reporting unprecedented turnout. Most strikingly, Texas and Hawaii have exceeded their total turnout in 2016, per CNN.
      How are people voting?
      Early voting includes in-person votes and mail-in and absentee ballots. According to McDonald, as of Sunday afternoon 34,004,455 in-person votes and 59,126,562 mailed ballots had been returned to election authorities. There were still 32,084,041 outstanding mail ballots.
      While many states have ramped-up in-person early voting because of heightened demand, it has not gone smoothly in all districts, with extensive lines reported. Some states do not have traditional early voting, but allow voters to cast “absentee” ballots in person.
      The specifics of mail-in voting vary. Some states make it very easy, others less so. Nine states and the District of Columbia are mostly carrying out elections by mail, automatically mailing ballots to eligible voters, according to CNN. In 36 states, any voter may request a ballot for voting by mail.
      Some states have drop-off locations so voters can deliver absentee ballots in person. In five states, however, voters must give an “acceptable excuse” for mail-based voting, CNN reported. FiveThirtyEight notes that in these “valid excuse” states, the pandemic “does not count”.
      In some states, barriers to mail-in voting include witness signature or notarization requirements.
      Why does this matter?
      According to CNN, 35 states and Washington DC have moved beyond the halfway point for ballots cast in 2016. Among these states are 13 “most competitively ranked states”, including Florida, a key prize in the fight for the White House. It is worth noting that Biden supporters have demonstrated a “strong preference” for mail-in voting, whereas Trump supporters have said they prefer to cast their ballots on election day.
      What about voting on election day?
      Of course, the pandemic impacts all in-person social interactions, and voting isn’t any different.
      Many barriers to in-person voting remain. Many states have ID requirements, with some requiring voters to bring photo identification. However, some states with voter ID requirements do allow voters who don’t bring identification to cast their ballots, if they sign a statement attesting to their identity.
      Some states have cut the number of places where people can cast in-person votes. Three counties in Kansas are reducing the number of polling places, per FiveThirtyEight. In Minnesota, localities with fewer than 400 registered voters may shutter “traditional polling places” but will provide in-person voting at election offices. The localities in Minnesota who selected this approach cover 217,056 registered voters, FiveThirtyEight notes.
      Mississippi is permitting “curbside voting” for persons showing coronavirus symptoms and will allow absentee voters to address signature problems on their ballots.
      Do all votes count?
      In a perfect world, all eligible ballots would be counted. However, the numerous issues and controversies surrounding voting, largely perpetuated by Republicans who fear heightened turnout – and the president’s bogus claims of potential mass voter fraud – put this at risk.
      Different areas have their own rules on how votes are counted. For example, some states will tally mail-in ballots if they are postmarked by or on election day and received within a certain period. In California, mailed ballots need to be postmarked by 3 November and received by 20 November.
      Others require ballots be postmarked and received by or on election day. In Alabama, absentee ballots have to be postmarked by 2 November and received by 12pm on 3 November, FiveThirtyEight notes.
      Trump-appointed postmaster general Louis Dejoy enacted cost-cutting measures this summer that dramatically slowed mail service, prompting fears that mail-in ballots will not arrive on time, including in key swing states. This week, video footage of a mailroom at a Miami post office appeared to show mail-in ballots “piled up in bins on the floor”. A source said the bins had languished for “over [a] week.”
      Election and postal officials have recommended voters mail their ballots at least one week prior to election day. Advocates have recommended that would-be absentee voters physically get their ballots to election authorities.
      In some places, such as the battleground state of Wisconsin, voters can deliver filled-out absentee ballots to clerks’ offices or place them in a secure drop-box, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. They can also deliver it by hand at early-voting stations or on election day. More

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      FBI investigating Trump supporters who swarmed Texas campaign bus

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      The FBI has confirmed it is investigating an incident in which a convoy of vehicles flying flags in support of President Donald Trump’s re-election bid surrounded a tour bus carrying campaign staff for Democratic challenger Joe Biden on a Texas highway.
      Friday’s incident prompted the Biden campaign to cancel at least two of its Texas events as Democrats accused the president of encouraging supporters to engage in acts of intimidation.
      “FBI San Antonio is aware of the incident and investigating,” special agent Michelle Lee, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in San Antonio, told Reuters in an email. “No further information is available at this time.”
      In response to news of the FBI’s investigation, Trump tweeted on Sunday night that the people involved in running the bus off the road were “patriots”.

      Donald J. Trump
      (@realDonaldTrump)
      In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people! https://t.co/of6Lna3HMU

      November 2, 2020

      A state representative and a witness said the caravan of Trump supporters in pickup trucks had come armed.
      “Armed Trump trolls harassing Biden Bus on I35, ramming volunteer vehicles & blocking traffic for 40 mins,” Texas state representative Rafael Anchía wrote on Twitter.
      The historian Eric Cervini, who had flown to Texas to help with get-out-the-vote efforts, posted a video on Instagram that showed a long line of cars with Trump paraphernalia stalled along the highway, waiting for the Biden-Harris bus.
      “These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, surrounded the bus on the interstate and attempted to drive it off the road,” he wrote, adding: “As a historian who studied the rise of the Third Reich, I can tell you: this is how a democracy dies.”
      The ambush, which took place on Friday as the bus traveled from San Antonio to Austin to conclude a three-day tour, included a crash between a white SUV and a black truck, police in San Marcos confirmed, though it was still unclear who caused the collision. Officers there had tried to provide a police escort for the Biden-Harris bus but were not able to catch up because of traffic.
      Even as dramatic footage from the scene caused widespread alarm, President Donald Trump threw his support behind the so-called Trump train, tweeting “I LOVE TEXAS!”
      Earlier on Sunday, he asked supporters at a rally in Michigan: “Did you see the way our people … were… protecting this bus … because they’re nice. They had hundreds of cars. Trump! Trump! Trump and the American flag.”
      Trump also said Biden supporters lacked such spirit and enthusiasm.
      One Texas Republican official, Naomi Narvaiz, applauded the caravan’s tactics to force the bus to leave: “Your kind aren’t welcome here!”
      “Funniest thing I’ve ever seen, man!” a Facebook user recording from New Braunfels guffawed in a video posted on Friday. “They’re, like, literally escorting him out of town.”
      A spokeswoman for Living Blue in Comal county, a local progressive group, told the Guardian the incident was a reflection of larger problems in the area, where “racist” locals “just kind of run this town, like the Klan did”.
      The spokeswoman, who asked to remain anonymous because she feared being targeted, added: “They’ve dragged the BLM flag. They’ve called people the N-word from their truck. So it’s straight up harassment and intimidation. And then, to see President Trump validate them by retweeting their video and saying he loves Texas, he’s basically endorsing domestic terrorism.”
      Amid safety concerns, Democrats in Texas cancelled multiple events. According to the Texas Tribune, the FBI was investigating.
      The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, had previously encouraged members of the Trump train in Texas to “get out there” and “have some fun” at the expense of vice- presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who was campaigning in the state but was not on the bus when the incident occurred.
      Two days out from election day, Texas is close, Trump leading Biden by 1.5 points, according to the FiveThirtyEight.com polling average.
      Tariq Thowfeek, Texas communications director for the Biden campaign, said in a statement: “Rather than engage in productive conversation about the drastically different visions that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have for our country, Trump supporters in Texas instead decided to put our staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way.”
      US representative Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat who represents constituents from San Antonio to Austin, said: “This aggressive, abusive conduct by his supporters results from Trump continuing to incite acts of intimidation and violence. We have to stand up to these bullies just as we seek to protect the right of every last Texan to vote out the Bully-in-Chief.” More

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      Trump has gone a long way toward hindering democracy in other countries

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      The president has questioned American democracy for four years, creating challenges abroadThe last time a Republican won the popular vote for president, the winning candidate declared that the spread of democracy was central to American security.“It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world,” said George W Bush in his second inaugural address in 2005. Continue reading… More

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      Joe Biden: from a campaign that came close to folding to the verge of victory

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      Just days before one of the most extraordinary presidential elections in US history, the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, finds himself flush with cash, polling ahead of Donald Trump in state and national polls, and on a bold last-minute campaign offensive in parts of the country his Republican opponent won in 2016, and would usually be able to depend on for support.
      After a year of a crippling pandemic, economic crisis and historic upheaval, according to some of the most important metrics, Biden is the favorite to win the 2020 presidential election and become the 46th president of the United States.
      Evoking the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president who guided the country through the Great Depression and the second world war, Biden brought his closing arguments deep into Republican heartland this week in Warm Springs, Georgia, a tiny spa town Roosevelt would often visit to treat his paralysis.
      “God and history have called us to this moment and to this mission,” Biden said, appealing directly to voters who chose Trump in 2016, in a sign of how emboldened this campaign has become. “The Bible tells us there’s a time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to heal. This is that time.”
      Biden’s mission was always certain: this election was a “battle for the soul of the nation”, he told voters when he announced his candidacy 18 months ago. But his fortunes haven’t always seemed so bright, and it was by no means a sure thing that he would even make it to this moment. More

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      The polls may have got it wrong in 2016, but not this time round. Surely?

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      If the poll numbers are to be believed, Joe Biden has already won this week’s US presidential race. But after the scarring experience of 2016, when Donald Trump unexpectedly came up from behind, few voters, election analysts, or even pollsters have complete faith in opinion-poll predictions.
      One exception is James Carville, Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign strategist, who says a Biden landslide, plus a Democratic takeover of the Senate, is a dead cert. “This thing is not going to be close,” he said last month. His interviewer was too polite to point out that Carville also predicted a Hillary Clinton landslide four years ago.
      The hedging of bets by commentators is understandable but not wholly rational. By most polling measures, Biden has held a clear lead over Trump for months in the vast majority of national and swing (battleground) state polls.
      The race is perceptibly tightening. But with four days to go, Biden’s averaged-out national lead was 7.4%, or about 51% to 43%. As of 29 October, he also led in all the top swing states, namely Florida (by an average 1.9%), Pennsylvania (5.8%), Michigan (8.4%), Wisconsin (7.8%), North Carolina (2.1%) and Arizona (3.4%).
      Some of these margins are narrow. But under winner-takes-all rules, all a state’s electoral-college votes go to the candidate who comes out ahead, even if by only 0.1%. In 2016, Trump won the college, and thus the election, thanks to victories by less than 2% in four states, including Florida with its 29 college votes.
      This time around, polls suggest, the opposite may happen. In other words, Trump could be on the losing end of close results in swing states. There may also be surprises, for example in Georgia and even Texas, states that traditionally vote Republican but are judged competitive this year.
      Given that he lost the 2016 popular vote by nearly three million ballots, Trump may nevertheless pin his hopes on pulling off the electoral-college trick again. He has made plain his willingness to contest the outcome if it goes against him. He could ask the supreme court, with its newly enhanced conservative majority, to adjudicate – as it did in 2000 when George W Bush sneaked past Al Gore.
      Fence-sitters fearful of being caught out again should also study poll data such as Trump’s average approval ratings. Overall, 53% of Americans disapprove of the job he is doing, against 44% who approve. On the economy, he has a 2.3% positive score but on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, he gets a 16.5% negative rating.
      Looked at another way, a current average of all polls suggests 50.4% of Americans have a favourable opinion of Biden, while Trump’s figure is 41.9%. In fact, Trump has not exceeded a 44% favourable rating at any time in his presidency. His under-performance is nothing if not consistent.
      US pollsters also assess voters by gender, race, education and religion. While Trump enjoys strong support from non-college-educated white men and Christian evangelicals, for example, Biden is said to be well ahead among all women voters, especially white suburban women, college graduates and Catholics.
      Biden is also counting on winning a large majority of black voters. It is thought that the Latino vote could split. Democratic successes in the 2018 midterm elections, when the party won control of the House of Representatives, were propelled by these groups.
      Meanwhile, some polling points towards a Democratic takeover in the 100-seat Senate. Republicans, who now hold a slim majority there, have most to lose. Seven out of nine “toss-ups” are held by GOP senators.
      It’s always possible that poll predictions of a Biden victory on Tuesday are overblown. But it seems unlikely that Trump can reverse voting intentions that have been firmly in place for months. Nearly 90 million Americans have already voted. It’s too late to change their minds. Even if the polls are as wrong as they were in 2016, Biden’s margin of advantage is so great that he still wins. Probably. More

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      'Blue shift': why votes counted after election day skew to the Democrats

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      Americans are voting by mail in record numbers – and that could extend the counting process several days if not weeks. But Donald Trump says the winner should be decided quicker – on election day.
      “It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate and I don’t believe that that’s by our laws,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
      But not only is it completely legal for votes to be counted after election day – it’s also normal. In 1968, for example, the New York Times published the state-by-state results one day after the election. In most states there were a significant number of ballots still to be counted. More