Post Reports

As the nation waits to find out the results of the election, we hear what it's like to report the news in this moment of uncertainty — with dispatches from political reporters and the editor who’s charged with deciding what goes on the front page.
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Buckle up folks. It’s gonna be a minute. 
Early Wednesday morning, President Trump falsely declared himself to have already won the election — a move that is far from surprising, according to White House reporter Toluse Olorunnipa. There is not a “precedent in modern history for a president to declare victory in this way when so many votes are yet to be counted,” Olorunnipa says. “But this is what we've come to expect from the president.”
Annie Linskey reports from the Biden camp, where the former vice president urged supporters to keep the faith. “We’re going to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying votes is finished,” Biden said. “And it ain’t over till every vote is counted.”
Eugene Scott of The Fix anticipates what’s next as ballots continue to be counted: “It's hard to believe that if this race is as close as it's looking like it's going to be,” he says, “that this won't go to the courts.”
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From Kenosha, Wis., to Greenville, N.C., voters are anxiously heading to the polls on the last day of the 2020 general election. How voters have navigated the process of casting a ballot this year. And what to watch for on this election night. 
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As voters continue to line up at polling places across the country, Washington Post reporters are asking what’s keeping them in their lines and what’s giving them hope looking forward. 
“2020 is obviously one of the most hard-fought campaigns in recent American history,” says senior editor Marc Fisher. “What we’ve learned is that states have wildly different ideas about how to run elections. And the result of it is that there is no one hard and fast way to vote anymore.” 
And as the day turns into night, Fix reporter Amber Phillips explains what to watch out for on election night. Follow The Post’s live results here. 
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How a chaotic year resulted in sky-high voter turnout. And, how Democrats are trying to win back rural votes in the Midwest. 
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The year of the vote: How Americans surmounted a pandemic and dizzying rule changes so their voices would be heard.
Can Biden compete in Trump’s rural strongholds? Democrats hope so.
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Maura Judkis explains 2020’s peculiar Halloween phenomenon: the mad dash for Home Depot’s decorative 12-foot-tall plastic skeletons. Subscribe to The Washington Post: https://postreports.com/offer

The decline of democracy in the United States. Lessons from 150 books about President Trump and his time in office. And, the rise of Sarah Cooper. 
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On multiple occasions, President Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if former vice president Joe Biden wins the election. That concerns a lot of people, including Sarah Repucci, vice president of research and analysis at Freedom House, an organization that studies democracies around the world. 
“Democracy is not an end point that you reach and you achieve it and then you don’t have to worry any more,” Repucci says. “Democracy is something that needs to be cultivated and something that needs to be cared for. And our democracy has not been cared for over the past number of years.” 
Nonfiction book critic Carlos Lozada has read a lot of books about Trump. This year, he took everything he learned from those books, and captured it in a book of his own, called “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era.” He talked with Lillian Cunningham, host of the podcast “Presidential,” about those lessons.
In the spring, Sarah Cooper went viral for lip-syncing to Trump on TikTok. And with a sitcom in development and a Netflix special on the way, arts reporter Geoff Edgers says the comic won’t be going back to her day job anytime soon. 
Our colleagues at The Washington Post podcast “Can He Do That?” have spent the better part of four years reporting on the Trump presidency. They have a new series out this week about the ways that the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric have contributed to a more sharply divided country.
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What it’s like to run an election in a pandemic. Also, the French president’s crusade to reform Islam.
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Chris Anderson is a Florida election official. In the weeks leading up to Nov. 3, he has been trying to administer an election safely, securely and as smoothly as possible. The tools of his trade: 101,000 Q-tips from a local Dollar Tree, a phone constantly pinging with text messages, and an election supervisor’s prayer that begs, “We don’t care who wins — just don’t let it be close.”
Another gruesome terrorist attack in France has intensified anti-Muslim sentiment. Instead of fighting systemic racism, France wants to “reform Islam.”  
Our colleagues at The Washington Post podcast “Can He Do That?” have spent the better part of four years reporting on the Trump presidency. They have a new series out this week about the ways that the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric have contributed to a more sharply divided country.
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A snapshot of what’s happening in key battleground states. What we can and can’t learn from polling. And a complicated end to the World Series.
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Reporters Jenna Johnson and Amy Gardner have been closely watching the presidential race play out in key states. In some of these states, such as Georgia and Texas, the polls are much closer than expected.
The Post’s polling director, Scott Clement, talks about Biden's narrow lead in Michigan, and what we can and can't learn from polling.
The Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series for the first time in more than three decades — but there was a dark cloud over celebrations after a player tested positive for the novel coronavirus but joined his teammates anyway. 
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What we can learn from a Supreme Court decision on mail-in ballots in Wisconsin. The states where most voters still can’t vote by mail. And why it’s easier to vote from space than from your own home.
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On Monday night, the Supreme Court rejected a request to extend Wisconsin’s deadline for counting mail-in ballots. Justice Brett M.Kavanaugh wrote a concurring argument that reporter Philip Bump says is riddled with dubious arguments, including an allegation that late ballots are somehow a suspicious effort to shift the results.
Forget the official deadlines: Experts and campaigns say it's now too late to vote by mail. The latest from Jacob Bogage.
Coronavirus cases are surging again. But in five states, most voters fearful of infection are not allowed to cast ballots by mail. Reporter Arelis Hernández describes the restrictions leaving tens of millions of people with the risky choice of voting in person or not voting at all. 
In 2020, casting a ballot from space may be easier than casting one on Earth. Editor Ruby Mellen explains how that could be.
Check out The Washington Post’s How to Vote guide for information on your state.
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In a new three-part documentary, The Washington Post explores a failed response to the coronavirus pandemic that’s left 225,000 Americans dead, despite decades of preparation in Washington. Watch “America’s Pandemic” here: http://wapo.st/pandemic

Mitch McConnell’s Supreme Court victory. The future of the Affordable Care Act. And a shift in the White House’s thinking on how to tackle the coronavirus.
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Trump’s conservative imprint on the federal judiciary gives Democrats a playbook — if they win.
‘ACB vs. ACA’: Why Democrats keep bringing up Obamacare during Barrett’s confirmation hearing.
With just over a week until Election Day, the White House has signaled that it’s done trying to contain the spread of the coronavirus, setting its chips on therapeutics and vaccines. And, as White House reporter Toluse Olorunnipa explains, that shift in attitude can be seen in how Vice President Pence’s office is handling its own outbreak.
Check out The Washington Post’s How to Vote guide for information on your state.
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What record-breaking early-voter turnout means for Democrats and Republicans. How one election official is handling the “tsunami” of ballots in her Texas county. Plus, the latest on foreign election interference. 
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Across the country, Democratic enthusiasm is propelling an enormous wave of early voting. But reporter Amy Gardner, who covers voting issues, explains that it’s still too early to know what that will mean for Democrat Joe Biden. Meanwhile, election officials such as Dana DeBeauvoir of Travis County, Tex., are scrambling to accommodate the record numbers of voters. 
During Thursday’s debate, President Trump and Biden were asked about the latest foreign interference in the election. Craig Timberg, national technology reporter, explains the story behind mysterious emails threatening Democratic voters this week. 
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