As an European, I'm struck by depending on media outlets announcements. Here we have official government committee, which gathers official results from all districts, sums the results and proclaims winner. Does USA have official, federal bureau for election results?
Yes and no. Elections in the USA are operated independently by each state in accordance to their own state laws. The federal government doesn't get involved until states finally report their individual certified results (via the office of the state governor) directly to congress, which happens several weeks after the vote during even a "normal" presidential election year. The fed level has zero to do with operating or certifying a presidential election, other than to receive the results and then accept them or don't.
The numbers being provided by the media are projections, and can only be projections until the states serve certified results to congress. They provide these projections because people generally want to know the results ahead of time, and media outlets have been providing these sort of predictions for decades.
Actually defrauding the election would require a monumental amount of coordination and collusion. There is a lot of bipartisan observation across the entire process, specifically to find and call out fraud. Sometimes people cast ballots in forms that are contestable (and it likely does occur more often with mail-in ballots), not signing them, voting in their old county of residence because they moved and haven't updated their registration yet, etc. There are legal reasons to discard ballots, but they're very much the exception, and typically caused by a mistake made by the individual citizen that cast it - it's rarely intentional.
All the rhetoric about 'illegal ballots' is just hot air trying to stir up unrest amongst the populace, likely because the incumbent campaign believes the predictions that mail-in ballots this cycle will be overwhelming cast in favor of his opponent. Despite all the hot air, there has yet to be any big reveal of actual fraudulent activity.
So, they're basically gaslighting the public in the hopes that they can create enough civil unrest that believers will physically storm the buildings that are counting ballots and stop the process. The resulting chaos that sort of event would create might cause enough destruction and disruption to cast verifiable uncertainty onto the process within that locality, thus making the count uncertifiable for the affected area. And the areas they're complaining about have typically leaned in favor of democrats in the past, so suppressing those votes would indeed be a benefit to Trump's chances.
Overall, the entire debacle is absolutely disgusting. Americans should be outraged about the abhorrent behavior by the current administration - attacks from the inside like this are quite literally the biggest actual threat to our democracy. I'm not shocked Trump would do something like this, he's about as close to a dictator of a president that I've ever witnessed. I'm more shocked that the republican party hasn't started to frantically distance themselves - I suspect they still fear he may actually win.
Media outlets? (Score:5, Insightful)
As an European, I'm struck by depending on media outlets announcements. Here we have official government committee, which gathers official results from all districts, sums the results and proclaims winner.
Does USA have official, federal bureau for election results?
Re:Media outlets? (Score:2)
Yes and no. Elections in the USA are operated independently by each state in accordance to their own state laws. The federal government doesn't get involved until states finally report their individual certified results (via the office of the state governor) directly to congress, which happens several weeks after the vote during even a "normal" presidential election year. The fed level has zero to do with operating or certifying a presidential election, other than to receive the results and then accept them or don't.
The numbers being provided by the media are projections, and can only be projections until the states serve certified results to congress. They provide these projections because people generally want to know the results ahead of time, and media outlets have been providing these sort of predictions for decades.
Actually defrauding the election would require a monumental amount of coordination and collusion. There is a lot of bipartisan observation across the entire process, specifically to find and call out fraud. Sometimes people cast ballots in forms that are contestable (and it likely does occur more often with mail-in ballots), not signing them, voting in their old county of residence because they moved and haven't updated their registration yet, etc. There are legal reasons to discard ballots, but they're very much the exception, and typically caused by a mistake made by the individual citizen that cast it - it's rarely intentional.
All the rhetoric about 'illegal ballots' is just hot air trying to stir up unrest amongst the populace, likely because the incumbent campaign believes the predictions that mail-in ballots this cycle will be overwhelming cast in favor of his opponent. Despite all the hot air, there has yet to be any big reveal of actual fraudulent activity.
So, they're basically gaslighting the public in the hopes that they can create enough civil unrest that believers will physically storm the buildings that are counting ballots and stop the process. The resulting chaos that sort of event would create might cause enough destruction and disruption to cast verifiable uncertainty onto the process within that locality, thus making the count uncertifiable for the affected area. And the areas they're complaining about have typically leaned in favor of democrats in the past, so suppressing those votes would indeed be a benefit to Trump's chances.
Overall, the entire debacle is absolutely disgusting. Americans should be outraged about the abhorrent behavior by the current administration - attacks from the inside like this are quite literally the biggest actual threat to our democracy. I'm not shocked Trump would do something like this, he's about as close to a dictator of a president that I've ever witnessed. I'm more shocked that the republican party hasn't started to frantically distance themselves - I suspect they still fear he may actually win.