Was waiting to Saturday, Nov 7 to call the election morally wrong?

[Motorcity]

Despite Biden leading in Nevada and Pennsylvania and the remaining vote coming from Democratic areas, news networks refused to call the election for Biden for 4 days. Despite the whole world knowing Biden had already won.

Well, most of us. The delay caused widespread of false information. While an election night call might have been impossible, I would have called it Wednesday morning.

Americans are used to knowing election results early. And there are always people who want to dispute and delegitimize the election results, but are silenced when their guy concedes or the news networks call it.

CNN, AP, and others did something morally wrong by waiting. Those four days created a very tense atmosphere and I think it directly led to the events of Jan 6.

But of course, the news networks liked having high ratings for a few days....

[Motorcity]

This has actually been the standard practice by networks to call races only after they are >99% confident of its expected outcome. I can cite numerous examples of races being called well after seasoned observers had a good general sense of its expected outcome - one such example is the Montana Senate race in 2020, where the AP called it almost four hours after polls had closed, even though (thanks to a certain poster's information on key county benchmarks) I had a good general sense of which candidate was on track to win as soon as the first few counties started reporting results.

But I would argue four days is kinda extreme. And the networks knew about the danger of fake news, violence, and Trump trying to delegitimize the results. Since Americans are used to knowing on election night, the longer they waited the more people from certain segments weren't reliable to accept the results

[Motorcity]

I don't think the decision to wait to call was irresponsible given the circumstances.

What I do think is wrong and have thought so for a long time is states taking weeks to count all the votes. California and New York are the worst when it comes to this, but Pennsylvania was pretty bad this year too. It makes the US look like a banana Republic. The crucial midwestern states were obviously new to this huge number of mail-in ballots, and they need to improve their vote-counting in future elections. Every state should follow Florida's (and Texas's) lead when it comes to counting votes. They prove that you don't need weeks to count the vast majority of votes after an election. Only military, provisional, and other irregular ballots should take that long. It'll depress conspiracy theories of stolen elections and the country will be better off.

I agree, its very irresponsible for California and New York to allow all the time in the world for local offices to count votes. Of course elderly volunteers are going to take their time, if allowed. Hell, both states had extremely close house races that could have decided control of the house!

Since these states contribute heavily to the national raw vote total, they are important. The national popular vote was fairly close for about a week. Had it been obvious Biden was going to lead by 4.5 points/ 7 million, Trump's claims would get less traction.

[Motorcity]

NV definitely should have been called Friday morning at latest. They held out weirdly long on NV when Biden was up by more than 2%.

Because AP and FOX called Arizona for Biden. Calling Nevada would put Biden at 270.

CNN didn't want to call Arizona. Nor did they want to call the election. But if they called Nevada than that would force AP to call Nevada. And thus the election. Which means CNN would have to call the election.

I feel like there was an unspoken agreement among media networks to call NV/PA and the overall election at the same time, when everyone felt safe.

But while CNN is my chosen source of news, they dragged things out. I hate FOX but I appreciate them being willing to end things. Same thing happened in 2018, they said Democrats would win the House long before the other networks did.