A pandemic vote will take a longer time to tally. The delay shows the system is working.

Sometimes the most obvious things simply need to be said out loud: Politicians don’t determine elections, the voters do.

It’s not complicated when it comes to the final decisions either. Just like umpires and referees oversee the rules in sports, election officials oversee them in elections. It’s almost impossible to imagine what a game would look like if the players themselves could decide strikes, or touchdowns, or fouls. Players may roll about on the field dramatically hoping the referee will take their side or plead their case to an umpire, but all of that behavior is little more than a show. Tune out the noise and wait for every vote to be counted.

In this election, countless articles have been written about the strong passions at hand, but ultimately election officials have the responsibility of counting the votes and making sure that every American is heard from equally. And the reality this year, is that counting votes may take a little bit longer. That’s fine. In fact, it’s proof positive that they are doing their job exactly as they should.

Stating the obvious, we are holding this election in the face of a pandemic and a national health crisis that has already taken the lives of more than 230,000 of our fellow Americans. It only makes sense that people should be able to cast their votes without any increased risk to their health. This is especially true for any North Carolinians who may have health conditions that put them at even greater risk. Their votes count as much as anyone else’s.

The practical impact of the pandemic is that elections officials across the country need the time to process a larger number of absentee and mail-in ballots. They have to take the extra time to open every envelope, review every ballot, and cross-check every vote cast. It simply takes longer to do that with mail-in ballots than with in-person voting, especially if your state just started counting mail-in ballots. Even in a state like North Carolina, where mail-in ballots are tabulated before the last day of voting, we still need to wait for every vote to be counted.

Beyond the impact of the pandemic, however, it’s important to recognize that people serving in the armed forces and their families are sometimes among those who are disproportionately harmed when mail-in ballot counts are rushed. For the obvious reason that many are serving overseas and that international mail delivery is less precise, these servicepeople are always over-represented in vote counts in the days following election day.

The fact of the matter is, however, that elections are almost never “decided” on election day. As Trevor Potter, the former Republican chair of the Federal Elections Commission has noted, all that is ever reported by the news media on election day is a “partial estimate” of the outcome. Actual election outcomes aren’t certified until often weeks later.

Taking the time to count every vote isn’t new in the least. From the birth of the country, the practicalities of the process have been understood. Our technical capabilities have advanced beyond what they could have imagined, but America’s founding fathers also recognized from the very beginning that counting votes would take time. That’s why the Electoral College doesn’t convene to finally decide the election until six weeks after election day, giving the process time to run its course.

It’s safe to say that we can all agree that this has been an intense election year. From choosing the President to determining the makeup of the Congress, there’s much at stake. But we should also be able to agree that in our democracy, the voters themselves are the most important voice. Our shared responsibility to one another as Americans is to make sure that every vote is counted and that every voice is heard.

We trust our independent election officials to make sure that is what happens. We should give them the time and the respect they need to do their job.

This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 12:40 PM with the headline "A pandemic vote will take a longer time to tally. The delay shows the system is working.."