We may want to know the results of the election on Tuesday night,

but there is absolutely no law or rule that we have to.

It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared or November 3rd

on set of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate.

And I don't believe that that's by our laws.

I don't believe that.

Believe it.

In fact, the only reason we're accustomed to hearing results on election night

is that news organizations call races based on unofficial results.

This year, even those calculations are going to take some time.

Well, the unofficial results that we get on election night,

they are based on the ballots that have been counted so far,

typically coming in from in-person voting.

Wendy Weiser, with the Brennan Center, points out in-person voting is going to be down this year,

while voting by mail is way up.

Those votes take longer to process and count.

This year, it might very well be the case that in many states,

we don't even know who the winners are on election night or for days after election day.

Consider this.

More than 85 million people have already cast a ballot,

but there are still legal questions about how some states will tally the final count,

how the media will call the winner,

...