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What happens in the days after America’s election

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6 days ago

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“There are no redos when it comes to elections,” says Al Schmidt. “Everything has to be done just right.” His spiel is part gospel, part warning, part pep talk. As Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, Mr Schmidt oversees elections in America’s most contested battleground. The candidate who carries his state—Kamala Harris or Donald Trump—will probably take the White House.
When Mr Schmidt alludes to “everything” that needs doing in this election, he means more than just voting. In Pennsylvania and across the country, tallying votes is a decentralised and drawn-out process. It may take days to know the result after election day on November 5th. (In 2020, it took nearly four days until major news organisations declared Joe Biden the winner.) The narrower the margin, the more time will be required for counting and recounting. Even then the result will be unofficial until Congress certifies it on January 6th 2025. In between lie a series of procedural steps performed by thousands of local and state officials.

Few Americans thought much about the mechanics of their elections until Mr Trump and his lawyers furiously sought to overturn his loss to Mr Biden. At every opportunity they tried to subvert what had long been considered a pro-forma process. Mr Trump’s allies alleged voter fraud in bunkum lawsuits, unsuccessfully strong-armed local and state officials to alter tallies and tried and failed to persuade Mike Pence, then Mr Trump’s vice-president, to block Congress from affirming the result. That day Mr Trump’s supporters ransacked the Capitol.

If this year’s election is as close as polls suggest, expect another fraught few weeks between November 5th and January 6th. Mr Trump will probably declare victory before news networks have called the race, stoking acrimony and misinformation. That Ms Harris is likely to do better among voters who post their ballots means that her fortunes will probably improve as the count progresses, since counting postal votes is usually slower. This occurred in 2020 in Pennsylvania, where Mr Trump’s initial lead turned to defeat by just over 80,000 votes, fuelling conspiracy theories about election theft. Mr Schmidt, then a local commissioner in Philadelphia, was targeted by Mr Trump on Twitter for refusing to investigate a “mountain of corruption”. Threats from MAGA supporters followed.

Counting: the days

All times in Eastern Standard Time (GMT–5)

Election day

Polls open in Pennsylvania. Counting of mail-in ballots starts

Polls close in Pennsylvania. Deadline for mail-in ballots to have reached counting officials

Unofficial results begin to be posted by local election boards in Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. In 2020, the close vote meant that four days passed before major news organisations declared that Joe Biden had won the state

In Pennsylvania, official canvass of the election starts. Counties “reconcile” their votes to check that the number of people recorded as having voted in each precinct matches the number of ballots counted. Officials also check the eligibility of provisional ballots

Unofficial county returns due to Pennsylvania’s secretary of state. Recount petitions must be filed within the next five days. If no revisions needed, then counties must certify

Pennsylvania’s secretary of state orders an automatic recount for any statewide race within a half-percentage-point margin

Recounts in Pennsylvania must begin no later than this date

Deadline for counties in Pennsylvania to certify to the secretary of state, who then starts on statewide certification

Deadline for governors (or, in the District of Columbia, the mayor) to submit a certificate of ascertainment, naming their state’s electors, to the National Archives

Electors meet in their state capitals to cast their votes

Deadline for electoral-college votes to be sent to the National Archives and the president of the Senate (ie, Kamala Harris in her capacity as vice-president)

Congress meets to count electoral-college votes and affirm the winner. Kamala Harris presides

The new president is inaugurated

In 2020 it took four days for news outlets to call the state, which delivered enough electoral-college votes to clinch Mr Biden’s victory. The delay stemmed partly from the fact that Pennsylvania prevents officials from pre-processing postal votes before election day. They cannot remove ballots from their envelopes, verify signatures and prepare ballots for machine counting. (Wisconsin is the only other swing state to similarly restrict pre-processing.) In 2020, amid the pandemic, 39% of ballots were cast by mail in Pennsylvania. The share may not be so high this time.

In Pennsylvania the count—or “canvass”—of postal ballots begins at 7am on election day. Most counties in the state, because they receive state funding, are required to keep at it until the job is finished, without pause. To be counted, postal votes must be received by the time that polls close, at 8pm on election day.

States write laws and set parameters for election administration, but counties handle the bulk of the work. They are like fiefdoms, says John Jones, a former federal judge in Pennsylvania; America has more than 3,000 of them. County commissioners select polling places, recruit staff and oversee the canvass. Then they report their tallies to state officials, who add them all up and certify the statewide result. Certifying means attesting to the accuracy and completeness of a count; until then returns are unofficial.

Allies of Mr Trump who claim without evidence that the 2020 election was rigged have been shut out of the most important statewide jobs in Arizona, Pennsylvania and even those swing states governed by Republicans. As a result, state officeholders are unlikely to block certification should Mr Trump lose. But some rogue officials at county level might withhold certification and thereby impede the rest of the process. Their job is “ministerial”, not discretionary, courts have ruled. They have no authority to investigate fraud or errors—under Pennsylvania law, that is for prosecutors and courts. In October a state judge in Georgia ruled that county election boards could not “play investigator, prosecutor, jury and judge” if they suspect fraud, and that they must certify once counting is finished.

Still, if Mr Trump loses, some county commissioners will probably allege improprieties and refuse to certify, inviting stand-offs with state officials. Already dozens have tried this in elections held over the past four years in every swing state but Wisconsin. When two Republican officials in Wayne County, Michigan, declined to certify the 2020 canvass there, Mr Trump tweeted: “Having courage is a beautiful thing.” In 2022 a Republican commissioner in Otero County, New Mexico, said his refusal to certify a primary election was based on “gut feeling”, not “evidence”. These cases were resolved when state officials or candidates either secured or threatened to seek a “writ of mandamus”, a court order compelling commissioners to certify. In Arizona two scofflaws were indicted.

Yet even unsuccessful efforts can mean long delays. In Pennsylvania, during the primaries in 2022, three majority-Republican county boards refused to certify the results because they decided that misdated postal votes need not be counted, contrary to state guidance. Courts ordered the boards to include those ballots and they eventually complied—more than three months after the primary. (Since then Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court has ruled that misdated postal ballots should not be counted.) A similar delay this year would conflict with the timeline for state-vote certification prescribed by federal law.

That law requires governors—in Pennsylvania’s case, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat—to submit statewide results by December 11th. These are known as “certificates of ascertainment”. To meet that date, states impose earlier deadlines on counties: in Pennsylvania, it is November 25th. Some Pennsylvania counties could miss the deadline if they slow-walk recounts, reckons Mr Jones, who predicts that Mr Schmidt may seek writs of mandamus in such cases. (In Pennsylvania recounts are automatically triggered in any race where the margin of victory is half a percentage point or less. Voters or candidates can ask courts for a recount if the margin is larger, but they typically must present evidence of fraud or error.)

Lawyers and courts, for their part, are poised to move quickly. Under rules handed down by Pennsylvania’s highest court, the timeline to appeal against a court decision has been compressed. What would normally take two or three months will happen in several days, says Ben Geffen of the Public Interest Law Centre in Philadelphia. As for claims of voter fraud, courts have had little patience for specious ones.

Certificates of ascertainment identify a state’s electors. These are representatives from the party of the winning candidate in each state, whom they pledge to vote for in the electoral college. Electors will meet in their state capitals on December 17th to fulfil this ceremonial role. On January 6th Congress counts electors’ votes and ratifies the winner. After the election in 2020 Republican lawmakers objected to the votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania; eight senators and 139 congressmen voted in favour of one or both objections. That will be harder this time: a federal law adopted in 2022 raised the threshold to lodge an objection from one member in each chamber to a fifth of members in each. Sustaining an objection requires a majority in each.

That the whole process appears so complex is a product of federalism and an archaic electoral-college system. That it faces such strain is a result of Mr Trump’s attacks. Unlike four years ago, everyone is attuned to the vulnerabilities now. “We’re not going to get caught with our pants down,” says Mr Geffen. The bigger worry, he adds, is disinformation and the distrust it sows. That problem can’t be solved by the courts. ■

Sources: The Economist

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Economics

Democrats need to understand: Americans think they’re worse

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4 hours ago

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November 6, 2024

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If you think Donald Trump is too crass or cruel or incompetent to be president—if you are disappointed or even astonished that, having tried and failed to subvert the will of the people in the last election, he has come back to win fair and square—you should be asking yourself this question: why, to so many Americans, does the Democratic Party seem worse?

This victory is a tremendous achievement for Mr Trump, who after his loss in 2020 and the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021 was counted out even by leaders of his own party. At the time Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, who privately regarded Mr Trump as “a sleazeball” and “stupid”, called the insurrection “further evidence of Donald Trump’s complete unfitness for office”, according to reporting he has not disputed in a new biography by Michael Tackett, a journalist.

Yet what might seem a psychological frailty—an inability to brook criticism or concede mistakes, much less defeat—has for Mr Trump been a mighty source of political strength, one that intensifies his connection to the voters he has made the base of the Republican Party. As in 2016, Mr Trump wielded his command of that bloc of voters this year to clear a path through crowded Republican primaries, and then relied upon “negative polarisation”, or fear of the other guys, to unite the party. “Can you believe he endorsed me?” Mr Trump chortled at a rally in North Carolina on November 3rd, gloating over how Mr McConnell eventually fell into line. Mr Trump felt no obligation to reciprocate. “Hopefully we get rid of Mitch McConnell pretty soon,” he said.

Mr Trump has shown courage, not only in weathering assassins’ attacks but in insisting on views on trade, entitlements and other matters that a few years ago were heresy within his party. With his sophisticated grasp of new and legacy media and his instinct for the basic needs and fears of many Americans, he has revolutionised how American politics is conducted and shifted the policy terrain over which it is waged. In terms of disrupting what came before, he has had more effect than even Ronald Reagan.

Unlike Reagan—or the other two-term presidents since, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama—Mr Trump has never been very popular, though he managed, in this third run as the Republican nominee, at last to win the popular vote. Unlike those predecessors, Mr Trump has relied upon division, not addition, for his electoral maths. In his first term his average approval rating of 41% was the lowest ever measured by the Gallup Poll, which began tracking the statistic under Harry Truman. Democrats have good reason to think Mr Trump repels many voters when he calls adversaries “vermin” or “the enemy from within” or says illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

Yet, after this victory, whatever disdain Democrats have for Mr Trump should be cause only for humility and self-scrutiny. As in 2016, Mr Trump’s broad support will present his adversaries with a Rorschach test in which they can see their preferred image of America, and it will be ugly. For some, white supremacy and misogyny will explain Mr Trump’s success, while others may attribute it to tax cuts and greed. Some will conclude that poor, non-white or female Americans have been ensorcelled into voting against their self-interest. Rather than retreat into some grand theory, they would so better ro think through how, in a divided country, President Joe Biden might have nudged the balance a few points away from Mr Trump, rather than to him. Kamala Harris was no bystander, but pime responsibility lies with the president she served.

Mr Biden did not heed his own warnings about Mr Trump. He tried to eat into Mr Trump’s support with blue-collar workers through giant investments in manufacturing and infrastructure that offered something to everyone. But, unlike Mr Clinton or Mr Obama, he ducked choices that would have respected the concerns of most Americans but disappointed left-wing Democrats. A political strategy of addition still requires some division.

Most egregious, Mr Biden resharpened Mr Trump’s most effective political wedge by doing away with obstacles he had created to illegal immigration, with no alternative. By the time he restored some of Mr Trump’s restrictions this spring, more than 4m migrants had crossed the southern border, compared with fewer than 1m under Mr Trump. That was terrible for the Democrats as a party, and worse for people they want to help and the cause they believe in: under Mr Biden, Americans who say they want a decrease in legal immigration rose from a minority to a majority, as did the number who favour mass deportation.

How to defend democracy

Even where Mr Biden had accomplishments that undermined Mr Trump’s arguments, he let himself be constrained by his party’s loudest activists. Oil production rose to record levels, but Mr Biden did not boast about that. He was also no longer up to the demands of presidential communication that Mr Trump understands so well. He was not constantly, energetically promoting his success in sustaining economic growth and raising wages. His approval rating sagged as low as 36% just asother Democrats were forcing him to face the obvious: he should not be running again. In the short time Ms Harris had, she waged a good campaign. But any politician would have struggled under such burdens. She could not separate herself enough from Mr Biden, or from the video Mr Trump’s ads used, to devastating effect, of her recently declaring positions that were alienating to most Americans.

“We have learned again that democracy is precious,” Mr Biden proudly declared during his inaugural address almost four years ago. “Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.” Now it has prevailed again. Will Democrats get the message this time? ■

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Economics

The Fed is likely cutting rates again Thursday. Everything you need to know

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12 hours ago

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November 6, 2024

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Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell holds a press conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on interest rate policy in Washington, U.S., September 18, 2024. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

Tom Brenner | Reuters

The Federal Reserve likely will stick to the business at hand when it wraps up its meeting Thursday with another interest rate cut, but will have its eye on the future against a backdrop that suddenly has gotten a lot more complicated.

Financial markets are pricing in a near-certainty that the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee will lower its benchmark borrowing cost by a quarter percentage point as it seeks to “recalibrate” policy for an economy that is seeing the inflation rate moderate and the labor market soften.

The focus, though, will turn to what’s ahead for Chair Jerome Powell and his Fed colleagues as they navigate a shifting economy — and the political earthquake of Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the presidential race.

“We think Powell will refuse to give any early judgment on the implications of the election for the economy and rates, and will seek to be a source of stability and calm,” Krishna Guha, head of global policy and central bank strategy at Evercore ISI, said in a a note issued before the election’s outcome was known.

In keeping with policymakers’ historical desire to stay above the political fray, Powell “will say the Fed will take the time it needs to study the new administration’s plans” then will “refine this assessment as actual policies are developed and enacted,” Guha added.

So while the immediate action will be to stay the course and enact the cut, which equals 25 basis points, the market’s attention likely will turn to what the committee and Powell have to say about the future. The fed funds rate, which sets what banks charge each other for overnight lending but often influences consumer debt as well, is currently targeted in a range between 4.75%-5.0%.

Market pricing currently favors another quarter-point cut in December, followed by a January pause then multiple reductions through 2025.

Preparing for Trump

But if Trump’s agenda — tax cuts, higher spending and aggressive tariffs — comes to fruition, it could have a meaningful impact on a Fed trying to right-size policy after the mammoth rate hikes aimed at controlling inflation. Many economists believe another round of isolationist economic moves from the president-elect could reignite inflation, which held below 3% during Trump’s entire first-term despite a similar recipe.

Trump was a frequent critic of Powell and the Fed during his term, which ran from 2017-21, and is in favor of low interest rates.

“Everyone is on the lookout for future rate cuts and whether anything is telegraphed,” said Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist at LPL Financial. “Also, however, there’s the question of whether or not they can declare victory on inflation.”

Any answers to those questions would be largely left to Powell’s post-meeting news conference.

Though the committee will release its joint decision on rates, it will not provide an update on its Summary of Economic Projections, a document issued quarterly that includes consensus updates on inflation, GDP growth and unemployment, as well as the anonymous “dot plot” of individual officials’ interest rate expectations.

Beyond the January pause, there’s considerable market uncertainty about where the Fed is heading. The SEP will be updated next in December.

“What we’re going to hear more and more of is the terminal rate,” Krosby said. “That’s going to come back into the lexicon if yields continue to climb higher, and it’s not completely associated with growth.”

So where’s the end?

Traders in the fed funds futures market are betting on an aggressive pace of cuts that by the close of 2025 would take the benchmark rate to a target range of 3.75%-4.0%, or a full percentage point below the current level following September’s half percentage point cut. The Secured Overnight Financing Rate for banks is a bit more cautious, indicating a short-term rate around 4.2% at the end of next year.

“A key question here is, what’s the end point of this rate cut cycle?” said Bill English, the Fed’s former head of monetary affairs and now a finance professor at the Yale School of Management. “Fairly soon, they’ve got to think about, where do we think this rate cut period changes with the economy looking pretty strong. They may want to take a pause fairly soon and see how things develop.”

Powell also may be called on to address the Fed’s current moves to reduce the bond holdings on its balance sheet.

Since commencing the effort in June 2022, the Fed has shaved nearly $2 trillion off its holdings in Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities. Fed officials have said that the balance sheet reduction can continue even while they cut rates, though Wall Street expectations are for the run-off to end as soon as early 2025.

“They’ve been happy to just kind of leave that percolating in the background and they probably continue to do that,” English said. “But there’s going to be a lot of interest over the next few meetings. At what point do they make a further adjustment to the pace of runoffs?”

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Economics

Donald Trump wins big and fast

Published

18 hours ago

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November 6, 2024

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IT IS AN extraordinary comeback—or, as Donald Trump triumphantly put it in West Palm Beach, Florida, in the early hours of November 6th, “a political victory that our country has never seen before”. After losing four years ago he has survived impeachment, conviction as a felon, numerous other indictments and two assassination attempts, and will become America’s 47th president, to add to his stint as the 45th. He becomes the oldest man ever to win the White House.

Many had expected a long wait for the result of an extremely close election to become clear. In the event, the outcome was evident within hours. Mr Trump looked set to win all seven of the critical swing states: he triumphed in North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and had strong leads in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada. That translates into a decisive advantage in the electoral college.

It appears that Mr Trump was able to draw support from both urban and rural voters at levels notably higher than in his contest against Joe Biden in 2020. In state after state, Mr Trump performed better than he had in 2020. In Florida, for example, where he won by three percentage points last time, his margin is on track to surge to 12 points. And although opinion-poll aggregates had consistently shown Kamala Harris to be ahead in the national popular vote, it seems that Mr Trump may have won that too. Just as in 2016 and 2020, in other words, the polls underestimated Mr Trump’s support.

What went wrong for Ms Harris? For one thing, her advantage among women voters, on whom Democrats were pinning their hopes, turned out to be smaller than expected. The gender gap, between the votes of men and women, actually narrowed, from 23 points in 2020 to 20, according to exit polls. Among Hispanic voters, Mr Trump made striking inroads, improving his margin by ten percentage points compared with 2020, according to CNN’s exit poll. The trend was particularly strong among Hispanic men: Joe Biden won their vote by a margin of 23 points; this time Mr Trump was on track to prevail among them by a margin of ten points. More broadly, dissatisfaction with high inflation and immigration contributed to a sense among voters that the country was on the wrong track, for which they naturally blame the incumbent. Much as Ms Harris sought to present herself as the candidate of change, she was stuck with her association with the current administration.

As well as the White House, the Republicans also wrested back control of the Senate. It was always going to be hard for Democrats to hold on to their slender majority in that chamber, given that they were defending a disproportionate number of seats (a third of which are up for election in each election cycle). Not only did Republicans take the vacant seat in West Virginia, as expected; they also flipped Ohio and Montana and prevailed in a close contest in Nebraska. The upsets Democrats hoped for in Florida and Texas failed to materialise. Republican control of the Senate smooths the way for Mr Trump to make important appointments—from cabinet secretaries to generals to Supreme Court justices—that require Senate confirmation.

Whether the Republicans complete their sweep by retaining control of the House of Representatives is still not clear. Results in California, to arrive later, will determine that. But Mr Trump, in his victory speech, was confident that the House would be his, too.

“This will truly be the golden age of America,” he declared. Few will question that the country is indeed entering a new age. Whether Mr Trump will truly “heal” America, as he promised, is more debatable. Beyond America’s borders, too, the consequences are momentous. From tariffs to climate change to Ukraine, the world must brace itself for Trump II.■

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