After all that’s happened in this bizarre election, we need to brace ourselves for the chance that it might not end on election night, or even the next morning. The risk of that happening is higher than it used to be — and higher than most of us realize.
This is not reason to panic. No one wants to relive the 2000 recount, but the good news is that we don’t have to.
Certainly, some of the reform measures adopted in the aftermath of 2000 have had the unintended but unavoidable consequence of increasing the possibility that a presidential election remains undecided for days or weeks. Yet such uncertainty would likely be a sign of the electoral system functioning as intended, not of a massive failure. In addition, an election without a clear victor after Nov. 8 need not be as disorderly or as protracted as the 2000 mess. If the 2016 presidential election goes into overtime, the game will be played on a different — and better — field from the one back then.
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