Dave Ross: Election Day and Decision Day are two separate things

Tomorrow is Election Day – that’s what the calendar says. But there are two problems with the term “Election Day.”

No. 1, we now have many election days, because people have been voting for weeks. No. 2, we have developed this expectation that, in addition to being Election Day, it should also be the day we find out who won.

And this is at the heart of the crisis of trust that we’re going through.

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There’s this fiction as the votes come in that we’re witnessing a game in progress. Therefore, there could be fixers or saboteurs in the wings ready to throw in manufactured votes if they see their candidate losing steam in a certain part of the country.

But once the deadline passes tonight, the game is over. The actual decision has been locked in. All that’s left is the clerical exercise of finding out what that decision is. That job should be free from outside influence.

When you release partial results – supporters of the losing candidate tend to get upset. And suddenly, there’s pressure to do something about it. Heck, a candidate might even pick up the phone and try to put pressure on an election official to change the results!

That should never be an option.

We should redefine Election Day as just the beginning of a process that actually culminates on what I would call “Decision Day.” That would be the day when states release the final results — not before then.

I’ve floated this idea before, but now we have an actual law that makes it possible. The Electoral Count Reform Act, passed in 2022, provides a five-week period for canvassing all the ballots, conducting recounts and settling court challenges. Until the end of that five-week period, the numbers are unofficial.

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So why not reflect this new reality and spare ourselves the phony horse race by requiring that states do not release any election results until each state is ready to certify that every legal vote has been properly counted? Instead of all the focus being on Election Day, the focus would be on Decision Day which, based on the new law, would be Dec. 16.

I know it sounds like a long time. I know this would ruin our tradition of election night coverage. And I would miss it.

But the goal is to prevent tampering and create confidence, and our current practice of releasing partial results is like publishing a book with half of its pages missing.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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