President Donald Trump has told his closest circle that he’ll declare a victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he’s “ahead” in the 2020 Presidential Election, but that doesn’t mean he’ll actually win.
The Presidential Election is just days away, and if 2016 taught us anything, it’s that it’s still anyone’s game at this point. But despite an overwhelming majority of experts predicting a Biden/Harris win, Trump is already planning his victory declaration.
According to Axios, Trump is preparing to declare victory on Tuesday night, even before key states like Pennsylvania have been counted, which honestly feels like a *very* Trump thing to do.
But before you buy yourself a bottle of wine and cry about another four years of a Trump presidency, it’s important to note that nobody – not Trump or Biden – can just declare themselves the winner before all of the votes have been counted.
So basically, if Trump gets on stage on Tuesday night (US time) and tells us all about how he’s won the election and is going to, uhh, make America great again, again, it doesn’t mean he’s actually won.
I know, I know, American politics is an absolute shit show and somehow makes our neverending cycle of #LibSpills seem like a cool and normal thing to happen. But this isn’t as simple as Trump just being an idiot and falsely proclaiming his victory. Let me explain.
Axios is reporting that Trump’s team are planning to essentially call bullshit on all mail-in ballots counted after Election Day on November 3, claiming that these votes are evidence of election fraud. However, with more mail-in votes than ever, it’s almost guaranteed that there will be completely valid and legal votes that won’t be processed until after November 3.
If you’ve been following the election, you may have heard the saying that it ‘won’t be election day, it’ll be election week’ thrown around a fair bit lately. Basically, because mail-in voting is more popular than ever this year (you know, because of Trump’s abysmal handling of the coronavirus pandemic), it will likely take longer to count all of the absentee votes.
Some states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (both critical swing states), aren’t actually allowed to start the tallying process on mail-in ballots until election day, while other states are allowed to process those ballots the day they receive them.
As you’d expect, this could massively skew the election results if we only counted the votes that were processed before Election Night, especially when experts are predicting as many as 10x more mail-in votes than previous years.
Thankfully, Trump doesn’t actually *have* the power to just ignore potentially thousands of absentee votes, but don’t be surprised if he tries.
According to Axios, Trump’s senior campaign advisor Jason Miller has already predicted that he “will be re-elected handily and no amount of post-election Democratic thievery will be able to change the results.”
If you’re confused AF right now, you’re not alone. American politics is a messy bitch, and I’m convinced that even the political experts are looking like this right now.
So what does this all mean?
We almost-definitely won’t know the president on November 3 (US time), but there’s a solid chance that Trump will try to prematurely declare his victory, regardless of the factual accuracy of his claims.
*sips tea*
Welcome to Election Week, baby.
