New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has warned Americans not to “fall” for false Republican claims of “suspicious” counting delays.
“Many states don’t allow mail-in ballots to be counted before Election Day. But many races can’t be called until mail-ins are counted, which can take over 24h. This is normal, but some GOP are laying ground to claim any race not called tonight is suspicious. Don’t fall for it,” the Democrat tweeted on Tuesday.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez said in a video posted to social media that it would be a “red flag if any Republicans are trying to declare victory before like 11pm and the media hasn’t called the race yet, so that they can just turn around and claim that the election was stolen”.
“We still have mail-in ballots that need to be counted,” she added, noting that some races will be called on election night but others “may take up to a week”.
“Just sit tight and don’t jump to any conclusions if races haven’t been called,” she told her followers.
Similarly to 2020, Republicans appear ready to question the 2022 results based on false premises if the votes don’t end up in their column by noting the amount of time that it takes to count mail-in votes, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
But it’s the GOP that has prevented mail-in ballots from being allowed to be counted before election day.
Richard Grenell, who served as former President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Germany, tweeted on 3 November that “any state which doesn’t count all the votes and announce the winner Tuesday night is incompetent”.
“Incompetent or crooked!” Trump ally Bernard Kerik responded.
“Why is it only Democrat blue cities that take ‘days’ to count their votes? The rest of the country manages to get it done on election night,” Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz claimed last month.
Unlike Mr Cruz’s version of events, the counting of mail-in ballots is slow in many areas of the US, it’s just more evident in urban areas with many ballots, areas which tend to lean towards the Democrats, The Post noted.
Mr Trump used the slower counting of mail-in ballots to falsely claim that the 2020 election was rigged.
A very small amount of places finish counting their votes on election night but since the differences are bigger in less competitive seats, the winner can be announced before all ballots have been counted.
Despite these Republican complaints, state legislatures controlled by the GOP have declined to change the rules to allow for ballot counting to start earlier.
