“We really need to get into a mindset that we will not know who the winner of the election is on election night,” said Nathaniel Persily

None of that is inherently a problem — it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with the tabulation or the accuracy of the count. If anything, it’s an indicator that election officials are working through the sort of safeguards that prevent fraud or errors.

But problems arise because voters don’t understand that, Persily said. And then these sorts of delays can become fertile ground for conspiracy theories.

“In some ways, this is the worst year to have a pandemic that affects election administration because we were already worrying about disinformation and loss of confidence,” Persily said. “And so now we have the additional challenge to voter confidence that’s posed by the possibility that all kinds of votes are going to be counted after Election Day.”