Election Night May Be Just the Beginning

Joe Pompeo: “The 2020 election is arguably the most consequential election in modern times, as a result of the life-or-death issues that all collided in the months preceding it, from America’s bungled response to COVID-19, to the racial-justice movement that has swept over the country, to the cataclysmic wildfires that climate change has exacerbated all up and down the West Coast. But it will be just as historic and unprecedented based simply on the sheer logistics of how this election will be conducted, with any number of potential land mines lying in wait.”

“In addition to the rapid adoption of mail-in voting, and the challenge of operating polling places during a pandemic that has already killed nearly 200,000 Americans, we’ll also be contending with the whims (and tweets) of an autocratically-minded incumbent who has spent the better part of four years sowing distrust in long-standing U.S. institutions, including the electoral process. It is, one might say, the first presidential contest of the post-truth, anti-fact era.”

Said AP executive editor Sally Buzzbee: “To me, the most challenging situation would be that it takes a while for the real results to be known, and people jump to conspiracy conclusions during that period. That to me is the worst-case scenario.”