With the 2020 presidential election coming to a close, it is important to look back and see why the outcome of an over 4 day wait to find out the winner of the Presidential Election occurred.

Election Day (11/3/20): With 161 million projected voters for the 2020 election cycle, many families take that time to sit down and enjoy their time together to watch who the next president will be. However, for this election, that took over four days and is still ongoing as of November 10th. I personally started watching the race while at work at 5:56 PM when Joe Biden was only leading by 13 electoral votes at 85. I checked in around three hours later at 8:01 PM to find that Biden had even more of a lead of 97 electoral votes while Trump was at just 112. I did not see that gap close until I had checked in on the election again at 10:32 PM when states such as Florida and Texas were called for Trump. At that time, there were still nine states that had not yet been called, and so I called it a night.

The day the race was called: The day that The Associated Press called the race for President Elect Joe Biden was November 7, after he won Pennsylvania and Nevada putting him at 290 electoral votes. While the current President Donald Trump is still suing states over the alleged voter fraud, the chances of a changed result are minimal to none. The harsh reality is that Donald Trump could win Georgia, and Pennsylvania and still not win. The current standings put Joe Biden at a projected total of 306 electoral votes with Donald Trump at 232.

An overview: Why did the Presidential Election take so long to be called? With this election cycle it took over four days for a winner to be called when in 2016, voters knew their president in less than eight hours from the start time. The reason this election cycle is taking so long is because the gap in some states between the two major candidates was so thin.

What can be done in the future? What some news outlets have been saying over the last few days is that to eliminate all this wait, is to just make it so when you vote with a mail in ballot, you have to include a photo ID to prove it’s really you voting. The only problem with this is that you would be putting a picture of your ID in an envelope that is leaving your possession.

In the end, most people are just glad that it is finally over. The Democratic Party maintained control over the house and it is expected that the Republicans will win the Senate while 51 seats are needed for majority and the Republicans have 50 with a few seats left to be filled.