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Candidates make final pitch to voters on election eve
The 2020 presidential election campaign season comes to a conclusion with both candidates hitting the trail for their final night. KTVU's Jana Katsuyama on what we can expect on Tuesday, including a delay in the results and how the ballots may or may not be counted.
BERKELEY, Calif. - Nearly 100 million early voters have already cast their ballots in what is expected to be a record turnout in this year's presidential election. On election night, however, experts say the nation must be patient because there is a good chance no winner will be declared on Nov. 3.
Key battleground states could be too close to call Tuesday night.
President Trump and Joe Biden both talked about the ballot-counting during their rallies Monday.
Biden plans to campaign in Pennsylvania where the race for its 20 electoral college votes has intensified.
He plans to visit Philadelphia and Scranton on Election Day. He visited Ohio and held a Pittsburgh rally Monday with his running mate Senator Kamala Harris and musicians Lady Gaga and John Legend.
"The power to change this country is in your hands," said Biden, "I don't care how hard Donald Trump tries, there's nothing, nothing that's going to stop the people of this nation from voting."
About 700,000 of the 3.1 million mail-in ballots requested in Pennsylvania are still outstanding.
President Trump stopped in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
"Hello, Wisconsin. Big day tomorrow. Big, big day. I think we're going to do very well in Wisconsin, just like we did four years ago," President Trump told the packed crowd in Kenosha, before moving to a final stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
President Trump, who won Wisconsin in 2016 by fewer than 23,000 votes, sought to cast doubt on the election process.
This year, with the pandemic increasing the number of mail-in ballots and early voting, states will be reporting their results at different times.
"We could be waiting for weeks before we ever find out what's going on," said President Trump, later adding, "It's going to be cheating. It's going to be cheating."
Election law and precedent, however, does not require a winner to be declared on election night, according to Henry Brady, Dean of the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy.
"Historically, elections sometimes took weeks to determine," said Brady, "There's nothing in law, there's nothing in tradition, there's no reason that the election has to be called on election night."
Brady says Florida is one critical swing state that is expected to report results early.
"One that's going to count very quickly because they started counting absentee votes mail-in votes early is Florida and Florida will come in probably pretty quickly tomorrow. And if Trump loses Florida. He's probably lost the presidency," said Brady.
Along with Florida, other swing states including Georgia, Ohio and North Carolina have been processing and counting early mail-in ballots as they are received and expect to report mail ballots first when polls close Tuesday night. Those early ballots could skew toward Democrats, but in-person voting could favor Republicans as they are included in the tally.
Another key swing state to watch is Pennsylvania, which likely won't have results until late in the week.
"Pennsylvania doesn't start counting its absentee mail and votes until tomorrow (election day). As a result, it's just going to take a long time and in fact the secretary of state, and the governor are saying maybe Friday or later before we really know what's happened in Pennsylvania," said Brady.
Michigan is another swing state that won't start counting mail-in ballots until election day.
Biden plans to return to Delaware Tuesday night after campaigning.
President Trump has no campaign stops scheduled and plans to have a party at the White House on election night.
In a sign of caution, the Associated Press explained its position on declaring a winner.
"Media organizations, including The Associated Press, declare winners in thousands of races on election night based on the results that are in, voter surveys and other political data. But in a close race, more of the vote may need to be counted before the AP can call a winner,” wrote Nicholas Riccardi of the Associated Press.
“We may not know who won the presidential election on Tuesday night,” Riccardi wrote, “And if so, it does not necessarily mean anything is broken, fraudulent, corrupted or wrong.”
Jana Katsuyama is a reporter for KTVU. Email Jana at jana.katsuyama@foxtv.com and follow her on Twitter @JanaKTVU or Facebook @NewsJana
LINKS FOR ELECTION DAY 2020:
State of California - Election Day information, find your polling place
National Election Day information