Our Shitty For-Profit Media Strikes Again

The TV news wants all elections wrapped up by 9:30pm on election night. It is better TV. When it isn’t all wrapped up by 9:30pm it feels like fraud, especially among those primed to yell “FRAUD!” whenever a Republican loses.

It’s a simple point. Democrats are concentrated in large urban counties. Almost everywhere in the country, these counties take longer to count the vote than more sparsely populated exurban and rural areas. That’s hardly surprising. It’s not new. We’re seeing it in Arizona and Florida. In fact, we’re seeing it across the country. It’s just that those are states with Senate and governors races that remain undecided. If you stop counting the votes before the blue regions are done counting, that obviously helps the Republican candidates quite a lot. That’s exactly what Rick Scott is trying to do as of last night, just much more openly and brazenly than even Republican candidates have done in the past.