By Ryan McMaken, Mises Institute

Election Day 2020 finally arrived, and it looks like it’s going to be a long process before the official winner is finally determined. There will be lawsuits over which ballots will be counted. Both sides will be accused of fraud and of other misdeeds. In the real world, there is always a gray area as to which votes are legit, and which are not. Determining the winners in elections is not a simple matter of just counting every vote. Very close votes are effectively tie votes.

And when it comes down to it, the final outcome will depend on thin margins in several states, and there will be doubts about the honesty of the count in each case.

But no matter what happens, Congress will have to certify and make a final determination as to who received the win in the electoral college. It is quite possible that only then will there be a known and settled winner.

They Predicted a Blue Wave

Of course, none of this was supposed to happen. According to the pollsters, voters would vote in a “blue wave,” with Biden handily winning in countless battleground states, including Florida. In currently disputed states like Wisconsin and Michigan, many pollsters gave Biden an edge of 10 percent or more. The Washington Post/ANB poll in late October had Biden up by 17points. The same poll had Biden up by 7 points in both Michigan and Pennsylvania. Lindsey Graham was supposed to lose his seat in South Carolina.

In reality, Republicans look to maintain control of the Senate. The Republicans also picked up seats in the House of Representatives. From the Democratic Party’s perspective, they clearly “underperformed,” and Glenn Greenwald summed it up this morning, stating:

You have an incumbent President with a massive recession, an unemployment, rent and foreclosure crisis, and an out-of-control pandemic, and this is what the Democrats are able to do with it….Assuming that Biden ekes out a victory, that the Democrats managed to *lose* seats in the House with everything going on might be the most shocking and pathetic part of what happened.

READ MORE