When will we know the US 2020 election result?
The night of Tuesday 3 November was always going to be memorable, with those who love Donald Trump and those who hate him glued to their television sets.
But it has now become apparent that this will really be an election unlike any ever before - because we may not know the results for some time.
Why might there be delays?
The 2016 election was called for Trump at about 02:30 EST (07:30 GMT) after victory in Wisconsin put him over the 270 electoral votes needed. This year will be very different.
An unprecedented number of Americans - 97.1 million by Monday, well over twice the number from 2016 - have voted by mail, given coronavirus concerns, and some states will count ballots that are delivered after the election if they are postmarked by a deadline.
In Washington state, for example, mail-in ballots can still be counted on 23 November. In Alaska state officials don’t even begin counting mail-in ballots until around 10 November.
Those two states are relatively unimportant for the final result in the presidential race, in that Washington is strongly Democrat and Alaska is fairly solidly Republican.
However, swing states will also face challenges reporting quickly.
In Pennsylvania — key for both Mr Biden and Mr Trump - mail-in ballots can be counted three days after polls close, following a battle that made it all the way to the Supreme Court.
In Michigan, processing of ballots does not begin until Election Day, or the day before the election in some jurisdictions, which may cause delays.
Read more: The electoral college system, explained
Furthermore, pandemic precautions may well cause long lines at polling stations, because fewer people will be allowed in at a time. Ballot counters will be restricted by social distancing measures, further slowing the process.
What have the candidates said?
Both candidates are well aware of the fact that there might be delays.
Joe Biden has been urged by Hillary Clinton not to concede on election night "under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out" - he has said that he will only accept “the full results”.
Donald Trump has taken it a step further, saying repeatedly that he might not accept the results at all. He is doing his utmost to warn of voter fraud and election rigging - something which experts say is extremely rare. The Brennan Center for Justice said rates for voter fraud in elections it had studied ranged from 0.0003 per cent to 0.0025 per cent.
Americans need to be ready for the fact that a result might not be immediately obvious - and not take that as a sign of fraud. Three vital swing states - Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin - do not permit the counting of mail-in ballots to begin until election day itself.
Read more: 2020 election odds: Here’s the latest predictions for Trump v Biden
“We have to prepare for the very strong probability that an election unlike any other we’ve ever had might take a little longer to accurately count with integrity,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of the Washington DC-based non-partisan Center for Election Innovation & Research.
“More time being taken to report results is not an indication of a problem.”
So when will we know the results?
The primaries give us some indication.
By 17 March, almost half of all states, 24, had held primaries. Five of those states heavily used vote-by-mail, as they had in previous elections. They reported their results in an average of 6.4 days, according to data analysed by the Washington Post.
The other 19 had mainly in-person voting, and reported results on average after 15 hours.
After 17 March, when the pandemic forced significant adjustments to voting systems, there were primaries in 23 more states, which took an average of four days to report nearly complete results. Nearly all of these states had traditionally relied on in-person voting.
New York processed 94 per cent of its votes within a few hours of polls closing. But counting the final six per cent of votes took more than 10 days, and one race in particular - for the congressional seat held by long-term Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney - took six weeks to be resolved.
That suggests it could take several days for the results to be clear, and, if both candidates accept the result, the matter will be solved.
What happens if the candidates don’t accept the result?
If either candidate is still not satisfied, a recount could be demanded.
In 2018, in Florida, a recount was demanded for three statewide races — for senator, governor and agriculture commissioner.
The machine recount was ordered on 10 November, with a deadline set for 8pm on 15 November.
That was still inconclusive, in the senate race, so Florida ordered its first ever recount by hand.
That was completed on 18 November, and officially approved on 20 November - two weeks to the day after the 6 November vote.
But even a recount result may be unlikely to resolve the issue: Mr Trump has said he believes the election result could end up in the Supreme Court.
Mail-In Ballot fraud found in many elections. People are just now seeing how bad, dishonest and slow it is. Election results could be delayed for months. No more big election night answers? 1% not even counted in 2016. Ridiculous! Just a formula for RIGGING an Election....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2020
What would the Supreme Court involvement be?
This has happened before. In the 2000 election, Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, argued that his narrow margin of defeat in Florida should lead to a recount.
It took 36 days and the Supreme Court to decide against a recount to settle the contest in favour of Republican George W Bush. He, like Trump, had lost the popular vote.
Various legal challenges could emerge this year - everything from the identification requirements for postal voting, to the legality of Covid-related changes to voting.
Is there a “hard deadline” to all this?
Inauguration Day - always 20 January, or 21 January if 20 January falls on a Sunday - is set in the Constitution, under the 20th Amendment, enacted in 1933.
Read more: How many US presidents have lost a second term?
Before then, the “lame duck” period stretched on until March, and caused plenty of problems.
In the "secession winter" after the election of Abraham Lincoln, President James Buchanan sat back and watched as secessionists seized federal forts and arsenals. By March 1861, when Lincoln finally took office, the Civil War was nearly lost before it even began.
And in the midst of the Great Depression, the lame duck period of president Herbert Hoover seemed far too long. In response, the 20th Amendment was proposed and adopted.
So 20 January, 2021, is therefore considered the ultimate hard deadline.
And if there are still problems?
If the election result is not confirmed and accepted by then, the United States will be plunged into a deeply partisan constitutional crisis.
