‘Entirely normal’: Why counting US votes takes time, is not a sign of fraud

Just hours after the polls closed in the 2020 United States presidential election, as millions of votes were still being counted, Donald Trump delivered an extraordinary address.

“We were getting ready to win this election – frankly, we did win this election,” the then-president told reporters in the early morning hours after Election Day, alleging that “a major fraud” was being committed.

“We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list,” he said.

Trump’s premature — and false — claim of victory over his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, who ultimately won the 2020 election, capped weeks of untrue voter fraud allegations made by the Republican incumbent.

Four years later, as the 2024 race between Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris remains too close to call, experts again are stressing that it could take days to count the votes — and that is not a sign of malfeasance.

“Just like in 2020, it’s entirely normal for vote counting to take several days,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the voting rights project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

That’s especially true “in closely contested states where things are going to be scrutinised and you’re going to have to count a lot of votes before you’re going to have a sense of who’s going to win those states”.

“It’s going to take time, and that’s due to built-in verification steps in the counting process to ensure accuracy,” she told media.