(AP) – Former President Donald Trump is stepping up his demands that the winner of the presidential race be declared shortly after polls close Tuesday, well before all the votes are counted.

Trump set the tone in 2020when he declared he had won early the morning after Election Day. This led his allies to demand that authorities “stop the count!” » He and many other conservatives have spent the past four years falsely claiming that fraud cost him this election and bemoaning the length of time it took to count ballots in the United States.

But one of the many reasons we’re unlikely to quickly know the winner on election night is that Republican lawmakers in two key states have refused to change laws that delay the count. Another reason is that most indications are that this will be a very close election and that it will take longer to determine who won in close elections than in blowout elections.

Ultimately, election experts note, the priority in counting votes is to ensure that it is an accurate and secure count, not to end the suspense moments after the polls close. polling stations.

“There’s nothing nefarious about it,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The delay is intended to protect the integrity of the process.”

Trump’s request also doesn’t appear to take into account the six time zones from the East Coast to Hawaii.

David Becker, elections expert and co-author of “The Big Truth,” debunks The lies of Trump’s 2020 electionsaid it was unrealistic for election officials in thousands of jurisdictions to “instantly snap their fingers and count 160 million multi-page ballots with dozens of races.”

Trump wants the race to be decided Tuesday night

During a Sunday gathering In Pennsylvania, Trump demanded that the race be decided shortly after some polls began to close.

“They have to be decided Tuesday night at 9 p.m., 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.,” Trump said. “A bunch of crooked people. They are crooked people.

It was not clear who he was targeting with the “crooked people” remark.

The timing is an example of why Trump’s demands don’t match the reality of elections in the United States. At 11 p.m. Eastern time, polls will just close in the two western swing states, Arizona and Nevada.

Trump has led conservatives to lament that the United States does not count elections as quickly as France or Argentina, where recent election results were announced hours after polls closed. But that’s because these countries only count one election at a time. America’s decentralized system prevents the federal government from controlling elections.

Instead, votes are counted in nearly 10,000 separate jurisdictions, each of which has its own elections for the state Legislature, city council, school boards and ballot measures to be tabulated at the same time. This is why the United States is taking longer to count votes.

Declaring a winner can take time

THE Associated Press calls the races when there is no possibility so that the lagging candidate can fill the gap. Sometimes, if a candidate is significantly late, a winner can be called quickly. But if the margin is narrow, then every vote could count. It takes a while for every vote to be counted, even in the country’s most efficient jurisdictions.

In 2018, for example, Republican Rick Scott won the U.S. Senate race in Florida, a state that conservatives regularly praise for its quick count. But the AP did not announce Scott’s victory until after a recount concluded on November 20, because Scott’s margin was so slim.

It also takes time to count each of the millions of votes because election officials must process contested, or “provisional,” ballots and verify whether they were legitimately cast. Ballots from military personnel or other U.S. citizens abroad may arrive at the last minute. Mail-in ballots usually arrive early, but there is a lengthy process to ensure they are not cast fraudulently. If this process does not start before Election Day, it may save the count.

Some states, like Arizona, also give voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected because the signatures didn’t match five days to prove they actually voted. This means that final figures simply cannot be available on Tuesday evening.