We are just hours away from knowing who the next president will be. However, there is a big possibility that the whole thing won’t be settled for several days even after the dust around polling stations has settled. But in the case of a landslide, we could know the results in the early morning hours of Wednesday.
There is also the possibility of either candidate could try to declare a premature victory.
Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who has led the former vice president’s campaign since the end of the Democrat primaries, told supporters during a virtual election protection briefing that Trump’s recent suggestions of declaring victory on election night if the race seemed to be going his way were improper. She argued that given the nature of voting during the novel coronavirus pandemic, it would be impossible for a victor to be determined until in-person and vote-by-mail ballots were counted—a process that could take days.
“We want to be clear with you that if he tries to do that, that will not be true,” O’Malley Dillon said. “Just declaring victory without actually having won … is really basically trying to say that COVID is over even though we know it’s not and all the evidence is saying that COVID in this country continues.”
“We want to be fundamentally clear, what we believe to be true, under no scenario will Donald Trump be declared a victor on election night,” she added.
Facebook reiterated its stance on premature proclamations earlier in the day adding that neither candidate should be allowed to declare victory until there is a consensus among the states.
