American Presidential Elections 2020.
This information is for some of my Nigerian friends. The American elections are conducted in two main formats.
1. You can wait until the Election Day and stay in line and vote in person.
2. You can request for a ballot (called Absentee Ballot), mark your vote and post it before or on the day of election (as long as the post office marks it as posted, it will count).
President Trump’s supporters (and some of Biden’s supporters) preferred to vote on Election Day (Option 1), since those votes are quickly counted by the machines, Trump had a lead in the early counted votes.
Due to COVID-19 incidence, some Joe Biden (and some Trump supporters) requested for absentee ballots (Option 2). These ballots are usually counted after the in-person (Option 1) voting ends on Election Day.
The mail in ballots or absentee ballots are in envelopes that have to be opened and fed into the counting machines by hand. These ballots are then tabulated and added to the the election totals.
These absentee ballots can change the projection of a political victory. The political parties have election monitors to supervise all that is happening in the counting rooms. This process can take more than a day to complete, depending on the number of absentee ballots coming from the post office.
There is not much the president or a presidential candidate can do about these processes.
Each state has an election process different from another. There is no national election conducting agency or organization. The state election is usually conducted under the state’s Secretary of State’s office (which is a separate elected office not appointed by the state governor). This is independent but is supervised by the state legislature, which controls financial allocations.
Yesterday (November 3, 2020), at the close of elections at 7:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time – EST), the direct in-person election results started being reported. Trump’s numbers were higher, but the absentee ballots have tilted the winning to Joe Biden.
This in a nutshell is an explanation of the USA election, which might have been confusing to some.
If you have any questions, you can ask in the comments and I will try to answer as best as I can.
