Election commissioner says "substantial chance" results will take time

According to Federal Elections Commission (FEC) commissioner Ellen Weintraub on Monday, there is a "substantial chance" that results for November's presidential election may not be known on election night, as voters turn to mail-in ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

“Let me just tell everybody, we’re all going to need to take a deep breath and be patient this year because there’s a substantial chance we are not going to know on election night what the results are,” Ms Weintraub said on CNN’s “New Day.”

“Probably for the presidency, but maybe for many other races that are important to people, and that's OK. If it takes a little bit longer to count all the votes accurately, that's what we need to do in order to ensure that everyone's vote counts,” she continued.

Ms Weintraub said you could "absolutely" have an "honest election with mail-ballots", and told the show's host that "the military's been doing it since the Civil War, there are many states that have robust mail-in voting systems already in place."

 She added that in 2016, some 25 per cent of votes came from mail-ballots, and in an apparent swipe at Donald Trump, said "voting experts do not really distinguish between absentee voting, which the president and the vice president have endorsed, and mail-in voting".

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