The 2020 election catastrophe that wasn’t

• The results of the 2020 general presidential election and several key congressional races are yet to be determined. 
• Regardless of who wins in the horserace, America can celebrate pulling off a successful presidential election with far fewer problems than expected.
• Seasoned election officials and ordinary citizens alike stepped up to avoid many of the catastrophic, nightmare scenarios predicated at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in the US. 
• A record number of Americans voted by mail or early in-person with few widespread issues, and in-person voting on Election Day was smooth and orderly.
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The morning after the 2020 election, many Americans felt a mix of confusion, trepidation, and — for some Democrats — even sadness over the initial results of the nail-biting election. 

Contrary to the rosy picture painted by some polls and election forecasts, the results of the presidential race remain undetermined, Democrats have a slim path to retake the US Senate, and many Democratic House representatives lost reelection bids. 

But no matter how the election for the presidency and other key races turn out, voters, election officials, and dedicated volunteers who helped keep the 2020 general election largely safe and secure in the face of the pandemic are clear winners of this election cycle. 

When the coronavirus hit, it put additional strain on election offices, many of which were underfunded and understaffed even before COVID-19, and squeezed state and local government budgets. Almost overnight, local election officials had to contend with a massive shortage in available poll workers and skyrocketing demand for voting by mail.  

After some states experienced serious issues with both mail and in-person voting in their primary elections, headlines in major news organizations warned for months of an impending election meltdown, widespread chaos with mail ballots, disruptions at the US Postal Service, problems with in-person voting, and vote counting disputes over the rise in mail ballots that could even reach the Congress or Supreme Court. 

On top of that, some experts feared that the hyper-polarized political environment and some of President Donald Trump's inflammatory rhetoric suggesting the presence of widespread voter fraud would lead to unrest and even violence at polling places either by individuals or militias. 

'If there weren't problems, we should be worried'

But despite those challenges, the United States saw historic early turnout and is on track for record-breaking overall voting numbers. The US Elections Project' database of early voting data found that 100 million Americans voted early in-person or by mail in 2020 compared to 57.2 million who opted to do so in 2016. 

High voter turnout is not mutually exclusive with election administration problems or even active attempts to suppress the vote. The 2020 presidential election did see some administrative issues caused by human error, as every election does, and efforts on the part of some state officials in places like Texas to explicitly restrict the vote.

In scaling up voting by mail, some counties experienced problems getting voters their ballots in a timely manner, printing errors in places like Pennsylvania and New York caused ballots to be sent to the wrong voters, and last-minute court battles over election rules confused voters.

Voters in many jurisdictions also endured hours-long wait times to vote in person in the primaries and when trying to vote early due to insufficient resources or logistical problems at voting sites in states including Georgia and New York.  

But instead of an election marred by chaos, voting problems, and civil unrest, the 2020 general election will be remembered as one with both record-high levels of voter turnout and participation, including by mail, and unprecedented numbers of citizens stepping off the sidelines to serve in their communities as election workers.

And the fact that we know of the problems that occured in the first place shows how, for the most part, the system works exactly as intended. 

"A presidential election is an election in which 150 million Americans do something very unusual during a short period of time in a process run by a million volunteers. If there weren't problems, we should be worried," David Becker, the CEO for the Center of Election Innovation and Research, told reporters in a pre-Election Day briefing. "There will always be some problems in elections. They are episodic, they are sporadic, they are part of the human condition."

Election Day itself was also remarkably smooth and uneventful for a pandemic election, thanks in part to both the unprecedented volume of Americans who voted early and the many Americans who stepped up to be poll workers and help out at in-person voting locations. 

Nightmare scenarios didn't play out and the 2020 election was a success

While there were some sporadic issues with some polling places not opening on time, equipment not being delivered in the morning, technology issues, and attempts at voter intimidation, all of which are par for the course in any election, there were few reports of excessively long lines and no widespread meltdowns at polling places. 

"We are on the path to a very successful Election Day, and an election season characterized by record turnout during early voting and record participation in vote by mail," Kristen Clarke, the Executive Director of the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which runs the Election Protection Hotline, told reporters on November 3, adding that she had not seen "major systemic problems or attempts to obstruct voting" on Election Day.

In addition to the overwhelming success of scaling up mail voting, the 2020 presidential election was one of the most secure from foreign interference and technology vulnerabilities in recent memory, experts like Becker have said, largely due to the now-widespread use of paper ballots and voting machines with verifiable paper trails. 

US officials undertook a wide-ranging effort to warn Americans of attempts to interfere with the election from foreign adversaries, including Russia, China, and Iran. And in the days and weeks leading up to Election Day, Paul Nakasone, the director of the National Security Agency, told reporters that foreign adversaries interfered less than they had before the 2018 midterm elections.

The country's top intelligence and law enforcement officials released a video last month reassuring voters of the safety and integrity of the election, and countering many of the president's conspiracy theories about voter fraud and mail-in voting.

John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, said that Russia and Iran were attempting to "influence public opinion" ahead of the election. He said that Russian and Iranian actors have obtained some voter-registration data, though as ProPublica's Jessica Huseman noted, most of that information is public anyway and Ratcliffe's disclosure did not indicate whether any election systems had been breached.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said that regardless of how voters cast their ballots, "rest assured that the security of the election — and safeguarding your vote — is and will continue to be one of our highest priorities." And William Evanina, the top counterintelligence official in the US, contradicted Trump's claims about foreign interference with mail ballots, saying, "It would be very difficult for adversaries to interfere with, or manipulate, voting results at scale."