The Weekly Sift

Tomorrow is going to be the most complicated Election Night of my lifetime, rivaled only by 2000. Bush/Gore was tightly contested, and we weren’t sure for weeks who the next president would be. But by early Wednesday morning we understood what the issue was: a razor-thin Florida margin that would shift as the votes were counted and recounted.

This election probably isn’t as close as that, but it’s complicated: It’s not just what the votes are, it’s how they’ll be counted and when we’ll find out. It’s whether right-wing militias or Russian cyber attacks will disrupt the process. When Trump declares victory Tuesday night based on sketchy results, will the system have the integrity to keep counting the votes accurately?

Also, there’s much more at stake than there seemed to be in 2000, when few suspected how conservative a president Bush would be. Trump is openly running against democracy, and promising to fire more officials who insist on doing their jobs with integrity, like Anthony Fauci or FBI Director Wray. In 2000, Ralph Nader could argue that it made no difference whether Bush or Gore won. Not this time.

So today’s featured post “What Happens Tomorrow?” has more to cover than my usual Election Night preview. It should be out by 11 EST.

The weekly summary will also have some election coverage, plus the recent Trump administration corruption scandals, the Republican effort to count as few votes as possible, that strange blue-line flag that has started appearing at Trump rallies, and — oh, by the way — we set records for Covid-19 cases this week, and Louisiana had another hurricane. Remember when a hurricane would dominate the news for a week or more?

I’ll try to get that out by 1.