Here we are, the morning after, and we are no closer to knowing the results of the Presidential election than we were before polls closed yesterday.

However, what we do know is that a handful of states — including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — stopped counting mail-in ballots fairly early in the evening on Tuesday night, which is problematic because they didn’t start counting mail-in ballots until Tuesday morning. So there is a backlog of mailed-in ballots that need to be counted, yet those states decided to call it a night.

If you wanted to avoid someone challenging the credibility of an election, I am not sure you could choose a worse way to handle the situation.

Here’s how it goes down. There are going to be ten or so hours of unaccounted-for activity and then the ballots start getting counted again. Then, there will be another ten or so hours of unaccounted-for activity and then we should have results on Friday. Instead of working through the night, state election officials have decided to give either side the chance to call shenanigans if their side loses.

How else do you think this goes down? If Trump wins Pennsylvania, Democrats will say that someone tampered with and threw out a bunch of votes to give it to Trump. If Biden wins the state, Republicans will say someone “found” a bunch of extra Democratic ballots and magically stole the race.

This is a clear case of getting off your rear end and doing the work right now so we can have a transparent process voters can trust in. Instead, we’re getting a system run on the whims of people who decided not to work in shifts but instead just give up for the night. That is not something we need to base our democratic systems on. We should be focused on transparency and accuracy, and not practices that open our system up to accusations (at best) of nefarious practices in our electoral system.

Hopefully, this will be addressed in a proper and transparent way, but it is certainly not giving off the vibes of a fair and just process. It stinks to high heaven, and no one seems to like that smell.