It is no secret that trust in elections has fallen, partly due to dubious claims for electoral fraud regarding North Korea Boats unloading bogus voting cards In Maine in 2020 Diebold voting machines Ohio reversing From Kerry to Bush in 2004 and other wild stories.
Although there are many tips on who is more guilty of this decreasing trust, there is a broad consent that delayed results contribute to it. As we saw in 2020, delays only a few days or hours cause conspiracy fears and theories. Several perceptible reforms would accelerate reporting, for example, the requirement to receive email votes on the day of elections and enabling them to be processed as they arrive, which increases trust in elections.
However, one proposal would delay the results even more and worsened the presidential election: Domestic popular voice Inter -lathe compact (NPV). Accepted by 17 states with 209 electoral votes, the compact requires member states to ignore their own voters and instead of choosing presidential voters on the basis of a candidate recognized as the most popular votes in the whole country. It only enters when they have joined a sufficient number of states that they have most of the electoral votes together. Sold as “End Run” around the election collegeThe compact would draw the process of determining the winner for several weeks, perhaps even until the day on which the elections must be designated.
Part of the problem is that there is no office national Number of votes. Each country gives its results in accordance with its principles, but compact member states must wait for each other country to end and reports a sum before creating a domestic version of votes. Two of the most populated states, California AND New YorkThey are notoriously snail-paced, counting on voting and report the results. Only these two states add millions of votes to domestic weeks or even over a month after the election day. For example, in 2016, California added about 1.1 million votes between November 19th and 23RdAnd New York reported about 225,000 votes on December 9.
In close elections with NPV Compact, these delayed results can easily change the result a few weeks after the election day. Delayed voices in California increased by 70 percent for Clinton, while New York voices went to her by 85 percent.
Other countries also count and report millions of votes long after the election day, often with similar slim bias. Research conducted by the Electoral Laboratory in MIT He found it in the last electionNational voting for a democratic ticket usually gains about two percentage points after election day. They call it “Blue change. “In 2016, Clinton had only 200,000 domestic votes at the election night, but increased to 2.9 million votes margin five weeks later.
This means that the Republican, who is ahead of three million votes in the morning after the election, may suddenly be in the dead heat – in a popular vote – five weeks later, when California, New York and several other states shed his last votes on the national sum. It is not tough to predict the fears and conspiracy theories that would be produced if a million or more votes were counted and added to national sums a month after the election day ended the change.
And not only Republicans who could feel airy. The policy is constantly changing, so at some time we could see the “red change”, in which the Republicans are ahead of Democrats in the national vote weeks after the election.
Electoral reforms are needed that strengthen the faith of the Americans in elections. Acceleration of counting votes, in order to report significant results at election night, should be a priority for every country. The domestic popular compact voice Compact would make this essential goal to make it even more fears and conspiracy theories to ride, and it should be rejected.
Sean Parnell is a senior member of Save Our States, where he focuses on electoral policy.
