Stop reporting partial totals on election night. All it does is create a false perception that there is some kind of ongoing race as the ballots are being counted. The idea that “the Republican candidate was ahead but then more votes came in and then the Democrat won,” is pure nonsense, but because of the way partial totals are reported on election night, it’s easy to make people believe that that’s what’s happening.
In reality, what happens on Election Day is that people go to the polls, then the polls close, then the votes are counted, and then the person with the most votes wins. That’s it.
So after the polls close, there should be a period of silence as the votes are counted, and when they’re *all* counted, election officials should announce that a result has been reached, and then they should publicly reveal the winner and the vote totals — and that’s all that’s required.
This would not change anything at all about the transparency of the process — vote totals from each county or city could still be logged separately for statistical purposes, and any auditing or recounting that might need to be done could still be done. It would just remove the part where we all pretend that the vote count itself is like a football game, where one team is driving towards the end zone, and then the other team gets a turnover and starts coming back, etc.
Creating that perception suggests to people that there is some magical thing about the vote counting process beyond the simple vote totals themselves, that can potentially change the outcome. But the fact is that when the polls close, the contest is OVER. Creating a new contest out of the counting process is nonsense, and IMO dangerous given how it can be exploited by people like Trump.
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