Stephen Collinson and Caitlin Hu

CNN

'What we're seeing is a real increase'

The truth is, there isn’t one US election. There are more than 50.

Each state and territory effectively has its own individual vote, a reality that will trigger bitter vote counts, electoral irregularities and court battles but will (hopefully) spit out a President at the end. The fragmented electoral process explains how Hillary Clinton could beat Donald Trump by nearly 3 million votes nationwide in 2016, yet still lose the presidency in the complex Electoral College system. It’s federalism in action.

 

In the US, there is no national standard on how people vote or on what device they register their choices. There is no common rule on when they can cast a ballot. In some states, voting is a breeze. In others, you stand in the rain or cold for hours to exercise the franchise.

Some states, especially those with conservative legislatures, go out of their way to make voting harder -- especially for minorities who tend to vote Democrat. In Texas -- a state bigger than France, by area -- a Republican governor limited early vote collection boxes to one per county. Some states cut off mail-in voting on Election Day. Others will count ballots that arrive several days later.

In many states, it's not even clear who actually runs the election. Secretaries of state are nominally in charge of vote integrity and counting. But America’s politicized judiciary often gets a say. On Tuesday for example, a Michigan judge struck down an order by the state’s Democratic secretary of state barring the open carrying of guns at polling places.

Occasionally, the Supreme Court — with a conservative majority —  gets dragged in. The disputed 2000 election decided by justices for George W. Bush still leaves a bitter taste. Now, America’s top bench seems to be wading into political disputes with little logic. It ruled Monday that a lower court usurped the power of Wisconsin legislators by ruling to extend mail-in voting deadlines. But Wisconsin’s Republican-run legislature, one of the least active in the country, has failed to fix an electoral system overloaded by demand amid the pandemic. More confusing still, that Supreme Court decision appears inconsistent with a previous ruling to allow an extended mail-in ballot deadline in Pennsylvania. 

American democracy might be a miracle, but it’s an increasingly messy one.