by Eric Lendrum
Election officials throughout the country are allegedly planning methods for counting the votes faster in 2024 than they did in 2020, where many days of delay led to confusion, chaos, and credible widespread accusations of voter fraud.
According to Politico, several of the handful of key swing states have passed laws to implement methods for quicker counting and tabulation of the votes. Secretaries of state in those same states are also taking a more active role in overseeing the elections.
“We’re going to continue to be laser focused on the space and time between when the polls close and the unofficial results are announced,” said Jocelyn Benson (D-Mich.), the Secretary of State of Michigan.
Another issue that led to widespread fraud and evidence of a stolen election in 2020 was the sheer volume of mail-in ballots, which were implemented due to the onset of the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic. With the pandemic finally over, mail-in voting is expected to be down significantly in 2024 compared to 2020. Mailed ballots were particularly complicated in 2020, as many states refused to begin counting them until after Election Day; now, some states are planning to have them counted prior to Election Day, so the results of those ballots can be factored in immediately rather than days later.
“The option for early voting in our state, and associated pre-processing and other pieces as well, will ultimately help us more smoothly and efficiently deliver unofficial election results after the polls close,” Benson continued, pointing to the fact that Michigan will now have one full week of pre-processing for mail-in ballots in 2024, compared to just 10 hours of pre-processing in 2020.
Other states, such as Georgia and Pennsylvania, have since passed laws ordering all counties to report by midnight of Election Day how many votes are left to count.
“I think you’re going to see like we did for the 2022 cycle, people are declared a winner by 9:30 or 10 o’clock at night,” said Brad Raffensperger (R-Ga.), the Secretary of State of Georgia. “The closer races went a little bit longer. But it was just the very, very close races that we just couldn’t make a determination that night.”
Other states have passed strict election integrity laws cracking down on practices that are susceptible to fraud, including mail-in ballots, ballot drop-boxes, and ballot harvesting; these states include Georgia, Iowa, Texas, and Florida. In particular, Georgia’s Senate Bill 202, also known as the “Election Integrity Act of 2021,” received widespread criticism from Democrats and other left-wing entities who falsely accused it of suppressing the black vote. Despite multiple legal challenges attempting to have the law overturned, a federal judge ultimately upheld the law.
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American Greatness reporter Eric Lendrum graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the Secretary of the College Republicans and the founding chairman of the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter.
Photo “Election Day 2020” by Phil Roeder. CC BY 2.0.
