Endless.
This Friday noon, the battle between Trump and Biden has still not delivered its verdict.
Three days after the closing of the voting booths, some states continue to count their ballots.
A count which seems all the longer as the election still has no winner in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania or Arizona.
The gaps are as thin as cigarette paper, so every vote counts.
But frankly, these delays are hardly a surprise.
In general, everything is going even "as planned", one assures for example within the department of the elections of the secretary of State of Nevada.
Early voting tripled, postal workers overwhelmed
Since this summer, observers have predicted such a wait before obtaining the official results.
The main reason is simple: the Covid-19 pandemic has completely changed the voting habits of Americans.
According to the latest estimates, nearly 100,000 citizens, anxious to avoid contamination as much as possible or simply not to shorten their working day, voted before Tuesday July 3.
And that either by correspondence, or by going to the polls in the days and weeks preceding.
100,000 votes, that corresponds no more or less to almost two thirds of the voters (62.5%).
An unprecedented score.
In 2016, only 33 million Americans had opted for early voting.
In Pennsylvania, a key state where hundreds of thousands of votes have yet to be counted, 2.6 million ballots arrived in the mail, ten times more than usual.
To capture this waiting time, it is also necessary to take into account the concerns of routing postal services.
A risk pointed out for a long time, again.
Donald Trump is accused of intentionally undersizing the USPS through his administration.
Removal of sorting machines deemed obsolete, removal of letter boxes, end of overtime work for letter carriers… These structural problems inevitably caused delays in the distribution of bulletins.
Worse, the USPS claims to have delivered at least 150,000 ballots after polling day, which risks jeopardizing thousands of votes yet declared within the legal deadlines.
VIDEO. NBC News explains why counting takes time
Let us now return to the polling stations, where the reasons for such a gap between the end of the vote and the announcement of the verdict are also hidden.
Firstly, in a very practical way, the counting of votes by mail takes more time because the voter uses two envelopes to preserve the confidentiality of his choice.
Election officers must therefore: check that they meet the legal criteria (signatures, postage dates, etc.);
open these two envelopes;
flatten ballots;
scan them and - if the machine cannot read them - process them manually.
"8000 scanned ballots per hour"
Everything requires significant logistics.
In a county in Georgia, the director of voting operations estimated Wednesday that his main problem was a lack of space to have the tables essential to "cutters", "extractors" and "flatteners".
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To make matters worse, due to local political fights, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan also had to wait for the close of polling stations to tackle these early ballots.
Finally, other states allow votes posted up to Tuesday to be taken into account, even if they arrive three days later (Pennsylvania) or even nine (North Carolina and Nevada).
Ballots containing signature errors or doubts about the identity of the voter (“provisional ballot”) are also counted within these deadlines.
For all these reasons, Cara Korte, reporter for CBS News, believes that the length of the count is a false debate.
“Not only is all this happening quickly, but it is happening in a fluid and precise manner,” confirms this journalist on Twitter.
Some voting machines, at Maricopa Co for example (in Arizona), count the ballots at a rate of 8,000 per hour.
Think about it!
You don't even breathe or blink 1000 times an hour ”.
Wrong question: What's taking so long?
Why: Some ballot machinery, in Maricopa Co for example, counts ballots at a rate of 8,000 / hr.
Think about that!
You don't even breathe or blink 1,000 times an hour.
Not only is this all going quickly, it's going smoothly and accurately.
- Cara Korte (@CaraKorte) November 5, 2020
Ultimately, the fact that several days of counting are necessary is not unexpected.
And in no way deserves to spread rumors of “theft”, no offense to Donald Trump's camp.
“Precise voting takes time.
It is possible that the results you see now may change after all the votes have been counted.
It is a proof of democracy, and not of fraud ”, recalled this Thursday Clint Hickman, the president of the council of supervisors of the county of Maricopa.
A man, important precision, of republican obedience.
VIDEO. US presidential election: pro-Trump try to prevent the end of the count