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The 2020 election may have lasting effects on voting methods and social media activity during contentious political races, panelists in a post-Election Day panel at Syracuse University said Wednesday night.

The panel, titled “The Day After: What’s Next? Breaking Down the Election,” featured Michelle Kinney, an SU alumnus and national press assistant for the Lincoln Project, David Klepper, a reporter for The Associated Press and Jennifer Grygiel, an assistant professor of communications at SU. The Newhouse School of Public Communications hosted the discussion as part of its 2020 election series.

The panelists shared their perspectives on the current state of the election. As of Wednesday night, former Vice President and SU alumnus Joe Biden led President Donald Trump in several key states, including Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin.

“At least from my vantage point and the work we are doing at the Lincoln Project, we feel really good about where we are going, and we see a Biden victory and perhaps even an announcement probably in the next 24 to 48 hours,” Kinney said. The Lincoln Project is a political action committee formed by former Republicans to oppose Trump’s re-election.

AP still hasn’t called the overall race because millions of votes are still being counted in states such as Pennsylvania, where the process could take days or weeks, Klepper said.

Trump filed lawsuits in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia on Wednesday to dispute the legitimacy of the ballot-counting process. The lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania allege that Trump’s campaign does not have sufficient access to spaces where ballots are being counted. The lawsuit in Georgia alleges that a poll worker at a ballot-counting station mixed processed and unprocessed absentee ballots.

“We’re in this awkward wait-and-see moment, which I think is strange for most Americans,” Klepper said.

Grygiel called the election a “hot mess,” specifically in relation to social media. A significant amount of misinformation has begun to circulate on Twitter and Facebook, they said.

People should be careful on YouTube in the days ahead because that’s where conspiracy theories and misinformation often spread, Grygiel said. They encouraged everyone to rely on trusted news sources.

Both Kinney and Klepper agreed with Grygiel’s characterization of the spread of misinformation.

Media outlets could do a better job explaining why it’s taking so long to count votes this year, Klepper said. More explanation of the vote-counting process in specific states could prove beneficial, he said.

The panelists also said that polls, which heavily favored Biden going into the election, failed to accurately predict the closeness of the race. Polls didn’t account for “shy” Trump voters, who might not have told pollsters that they were voting to re-elect the president, panelists said.

“One lesson from this is we have all been talking about how we have to be patient,” Keppler said. “We have to wait for the results, though we all know that’s hard to do.”

The panelists also discussed the long-lasting effects of the 2020 election, especially the expansion of mail-in and early voting methods in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Kinney thinks mail-in voting should become standard practice moving forward.

“We should be making it easy to vote for people,” Kinney said. “We shouldn’t be making it harder.”

Published on November 5, 2020 at 1:32 am

Contact Madison: mntyler@syr.edu