Call it Election Week

(Associated Press) – Minnesota’s top election official is sharing some important information on voting just one day ahead of the General Election.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon wants to reassure voters that the election process is sound, even inviting people to check it out themselves.

“Go look at it, look under the hood,” Simon said, who adds if there be disputes, let them happen in court, and not in the street.

“We all, as Americans and Minnesotans, at the end of the day after the court process, when the last court has issued its last ruling, we all have to come together and accept the outcome of elections,” Simon said. “Even if, and maybe especially if, they aren’t consistent with the way we would have liked them to come out if anyone has any questions before voting.”

Simon adds that in states like Minnesota, they should see results as soon as Wednesday morning. But that’s not so for some other states, which Simon says doesn’t mean something nefarious is happening.

“Even in battleground Pennsylvania, their law calls for counting that will go into Wednesday, Thursday, maybe Friday,” Simon explains. “That’s them following their law. That’s not a sign that something is bad or something was rigged or fixed or stolen. That’s them following their law.”

Trump and some Republicans already challenging Election results

Part of the issue are false claims still related to the 2020 Election results. Already, former President Donald Trump has spent months laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the 2024 election if he loses — just as he did four years ago.

At rally after rally, he urges his supporters to deliver a victory “too big to rig,” telling them the only way he can lose is if Democrats cheat. He has refused to say, repeatedly, whether he will accept the results regardless of the outcome. And he’s claimed cheating is already underway, citing debunked claims or outrageous theories with no basis in reality.

“The only thing that can stop us is the cheating. It’s the only thing that can stop us,” he said at an event in Arizona late Thursday night.

In 2020, Trump prematurely declared victory from the White House. He launched a legal and political effort to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden that culminated in the storming of the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump has made election lies central to his 2024 campaign, issuing fevered warnings about fraud while promising to take retribution against people he sees as standing in his way.

This year, he is backed by a sophisticated “election integrity” operation built by his campaign and the Republican National Committee that has filed more than 130 lawsuits already and signed up more than 230,000 volunteers being trained to deploy as poll watchers and poll workers across the country on Election Day.

The U.S. Department of Justice has also announced plans to monitor 86 sites in 27 states across the country, including in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Detroit, Milwaukee and others.

How long will it take to know the winner?

Election Day in the United States is now often considered election week as each state follows its own rules and practices for counting ballots — not to mention the legal challenges — that can delay the results. But the truth is, nobody knows how long it will take for the winner to be announced this time.

In 2020, The Associated Press declared President Joe Biden the winner on Saturday afternoon — four days after polls closed. But even then, The AP called North Carolina for Trump 10 days after Election Day and Georgia for Biden 16 days later after hand recounts.

Four years earlier, the 2016 election was decided just hours after most polls closed. The AP declared Trump the winner on election night at 2:29 a.m. (it was technically Wednesday morning on the East Coast).

This time, both campaigns believe the race is extremely close across the seven swing states that are expected to decide the election, barring a major surprise: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The size of the map and the tightness of the race make it hard to predict when a winner could be declared.