Don’t be surprised or alarmed if presidential election is not decided Tuesday night

People across the U.S. should be prepared to not know the winner of the presidential election Tuesday night, and perhaps for days after — a likely scenario that may stoke partisan tensions but does not necessarily signal breakdowns in democratic systems.

Don’t be surprised if it takes days to sort out, especially because this election is unlike any other with the sheer magnitude of votes cast before Election Day, either through mail-in ballots or early voting. According to the U.S. Election Project, a nonpartisan website run by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald, about 97.8 million people have voted in the 2020 election already — or 71% of the total votes cast in the 2016 election.

Counting all those votes could take longer because of a patchwork of differing state laws that govern when election officials can start processing mail-in ballots. In several states, those votes cannot be counted until Election Day, meaning an unprecedented volume of mailed-in votes won’t be processed until Tuesday. Three such states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, key battlegrounds on the road to the White House.

Add in ballots cast on Election Day, or mail-in ballots that arrive on or after Tuesday, and the process could stretch even further. Once those mail-in ballots can be counted, election workers will remove ballots from envelopes by hand, verify voters’ signatures and count them.

Election departments across the country have been advising voters: An accurate count is not necessarily one that will provide results before people go to bed Tuesday.

Then come the lawyers. The Associated Press reported that about 300 lawsuits have already been filed over the election in dozens of states. Much of the ligation stems from procedural changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which boosted mail-in voting this year. The Pew Research Center found that in this year’s primary in 37 states, the percentage of mail-in votes more than doubled than in those same jurisdictions in the 2018 and 2016 general elections.

Florida could have results sooner

In Florida, election officials have already been processing votes for about three weeks. That does not necessarily mean Floridians will go to bed knowing if the state’s critical 29 electoral votes are going to President Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The margin could be close, as the swing state has shown in prior elections.

Yet regardless of the margins, Florida could have a clearer picture of what comes next before other states, whether it’s a close call that requires a recount or a winner can be declared. Even if the nation has to wait a bit longer to declare a winner in the presidential race, Florida’s local and state races and ballot questions could have clearer outcomes sooner.

In Miami-Dade County, officials have already counted more than 1 million votes — ballots cast by about 64% of the county’s registered voters. About 489,000 of those votes were mailed in or dropped off, and about 513,000 people voted early in person.

Using new tabulation machines and other upgraded equipment purchased in advance of this election, a beefed-up staff in Supervisor of Elections Christina White’s office has been preparing for a big turnout for several months. More people were already turning to mail-in ballots each election already, a trend that spiked this year in part due to the concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic.

Election officials are estimating an 80% turnout this year. If that is accurate, about another 200,000 votes would come in on Tuesday. The breakdown between in-person votes and mail-in ballots submitted on Election Day will determine how much counting will be left to do, and whether that counting would extend beyond Tuesday night.

“We have been doing voter education and saying, ‘Don’t delay. Get us your vote-by-mail ballot as soon as you can,’ ” said Deputy Elections Supervisor Suzy Trutie.

The early start has officials in Miami-Dade’s neighboring county to the north, deep-blue Broward County, staunchly confident that Tuesday will go smoothly.

Steven Vancore, Broward County Supervisor of Elections spokesman, said “it would take a natural disaster” for them not to know how voters in the county voted by Tuesday evening.

“We have 833,000 ballots in hand, processed and done,” he said. “We’re executing 125,00 tomorrow, which is a small, municipal election, a small primary. We’ll get ballots throughout the day from people dropping off, vote by mail, etc. We are locked and loaded, right now. ... We have 500 uncounted ballots in the building. That’s nothing. We’re pretty confident we’re going to be rockin’ and rollin’.”

Vancore said he expects Broward County to post 80% to 85% of its ballots soon after polls close at 7 p.m. The county has more than 1.2 million registered voters. Vancore said turnout for this year’s elections is going to be “reasonably high.”

Broward has 577 precincts, and the voting infrastructure is set up to accommodate between 600,000 and 700,000 votes on Election Day. Vancore said Broward would be lucky if it gets 100,000 to 125,000.

Trutie said voters can expect the usual flow of results on Tuesday night after polls close. Within an hour, officials will release the results of those 1 million votes. After that, results from Election Day precincts and mail-in ballots received Tuesday would be reported regularly through the night.

Nevertheless, different policies in other states could mean an answer on the presidency has local municipal leaders preparing for any potential unrest. On Monday, Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina released a video on Twitter asking residents to remain calm as they await results,

“Be patient, and trust the process,” Colina said. “It’s important that every vote is counted, so if it takes a little bit longer than we anticipate, that’s OK. That shouldn’t cause anybody any fear or anxiety.”

It’s taken longer in the past

It’s hard to forget the drama surrounding the recount in the 2000 presidential election, which came down to 537 votes.

That year, an angry mob of political operatives and protesters, claiming that ballots were being forged at Miami-Dade’s county headquarters, rushed the facility and forced the shutdown of the county’s recount. Lawsuits raged, and the election was decided in George W. Bush’s favor only after the U.S. Supreme Court decided to stop recounts six weeks after Election Day.

Echoes of the Bush v. Gore saga could be heard in 2018, when three statewide races finished so close they automatically went to recounts. A dragged-out process of counting tens of thousands of South Floridians’ ballots drew criticism from Republicans who were losing ground to Democratic candidates in the days after the election.

Trump’s election in 2016 — at the time framed as an upset that defied polls, conventional wisdom and the political establishment — was not declared until late on Election Night. Shortly after his opponent Hillary Clinton conceded, Trump gave his victory speech around 3 a.m.

The major difference this year: an avalanche of ballots mailed in before Election Day.

Count could be longer in other states

In Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the massive amount of mail-in ballots cannot be processed until Election Day.

Pennsylvania’s state elections chief has urged county supervisors to start counting mail-in ballots early Tuesday morning, according to Politico. That’s more than 3 million votes.

NPR reported that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said it could take until Friday for all ballots to be counted. More than 3.3 million Michiganders requested mail-in ballots. More than 2.6 million returned them, as of Friday, according to Benson’s office.

Wisconsin, another state Trump won in a close victory four years ago, is also expecting to take longer because of state laws and other factors. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that in two counties, election workers will have to fill out as many as 13,500 replacement ballots because of a printing error.

In these key battleground states, the deluge of mail-in ballots is clearly expected to extend counting past Election Day, which could delay a clear outcome for the presidential race. Litigation could follow.

Election laws in other states resemble Florida’s approach, allowing supervisors to start counting early. In North Carolina, officials expect to have 97% of the vote counted on Election Night. Still, close races could be decided by last-minute votes, including mail-in ballots that arrive after Tuesday. The state extended the deadline for mail-in ballots to arrive to Nov. 12, as long as they’re postmarked by Tuesday. In races with slim margins, the results might not be known for several days.

Miami Herald staff writer David Smiley contributed to this report.