Thing is, they have weeks. The final results don’t need to be certified until early December, and everything sorted out by Dec. 8 to meet the safe harbor deadline. What we need is a media that isn’t setting unrealistic expectations about unprecedented circumstances for voting. https://twitter.com/hotlinejosh/status/1301492555507544064

Election Night results have always been unofficial. The final results that determine electors have always been certified later on. A slower count doesn’t change this, but if the count is orderly & unimpeded by partisan actors, it shouldn’t be an issue. But it will be, sadly.

But states that are not used to handling large # of mail votes should change their regulations to ease the counting process. The faster & more efficient the count, the better. But a slow count doesn’t mean the final results will be *delayed*.

One worry of course is that a slow count devolves into a delay. New York’s primary showed how that can go, and hopefully no state has that problem come early December.

As a member of the media, I want people to understand the nuances & not think that slow Election Night results are a fundamental problem. In of themselves, they aren’t. How malevolent actors react to them is another story, however, and the media shouldn’t be helping them.