Will We Count All the Votes?

Yesterday morning, I asked, “Is Hillary Clinton is the U.S. President-Elect?”

My question was based on three things:

  • As we have known since last Tuesday night, the outcomes of the especially close popular votes in Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin will, when translated into electoral votes, determine who is elected president when the electors vote next month.
  • I (still) can’t find any government announcements or news reports that all of the votes in each of those States have been counted, or that they will be counted.
  • I think that the public should be discussing the value of recounting votes in those States, to be sure that their electoral votes are awarded to the correct candidate, the one whom the voters actually chose.

On this Sunday morning, Clinton is leading in the national reported popular vote by about 570,000 votes, which is up from about 400,000 that had been counted and reported as of yesterday.  That still is irrelevant, because electoral votes make a president.

But the popular vote in each State is very relevant, because each State awards its electoral votes to the winner of its popular vote.

Right now, based on reported popular votes in each State, Trump has 290 electoral votes and Clinton has 228.

That means that if final popular vote totals were to favor Clinton in only two States, Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) and New Hampshire (4 electoral votes), Trump would drop below 270.

That also means that if Clinton were determined to have won the popular votes in two more States, Michigan (16 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), she would have 278 electoral votes, and the presidency.

Here is the latest on the votes in these four key States—

  • Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) has been declared, based on state officials having reported 99% of the vote, for Trump—he leads by about 68,000 votes, out of about 5.7 million.
  • Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) has been declared, based state officials having reported 100% of the vote, for Trump—he leads by about 27,000 votes, out of about 2.8 million.
  • Michigan (16 electoral votes) has not yet been declared, despite state officials having reported 100% of the vote. Trump leads there by about 12,000 votes, out of about 4.5 million.
  • New Hampshire (4 electoral votes) has not yet been declared, despite state officials having reported 100% of the vote. Clinton leads there by about 2,500 votes, out of about 700,000.

So I’m still asking:

Have all the votes in each State been counted?

And are these races so close that the votes in each should be recounted, while we have time to get this right?

2 thoughts on “Will We Count All the Votes?

  1. linda

    These results are so strikingly close, and don’t appear to be complete yet. I’m wondering John, what does “declared” mean in these contexts? Does it just mean declared by AP, CNN, etc? They all have slightly different results showing at the moment.

    I’m not American, I’m Australian, and here the result is declared by the Federal Election Commission, after all state results are returned. Is there any central official body in the US that formalises results? or is it just a case of the states declaring (presumably after all early / absent votes are counted), after the media informally “declare”?

    Reply
  2. Ellen

    We are still a month away from the meeting of the Electoral College. In the meantime Trump supporters are getting disillusioned by his backing off promises and showing what he’ll actually do. There will be fewer riots if they let Trump hang himself before the Electoral meet. It’s actually pretty smart.

    Reply

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