“our polls are open until 8 pm. Are you suggesting that we start reporting results before the polls close?”
In the USA we do, in fact, start reporting results before all the polls close, depending on the time zone. When I lived in Alaska, before I even got out of work to go vote, my sister called to tell me Reagan had won the election. Polls had closed in the east, but ours wouldn’t close for five more hours. (I still voted.)
The 8:00 time stated by the French official interviewed often on War Room often is a “for instance”. The POINT was that once the polls closed in a precinct, they had results within two hours’ time. (Just like us, France spans many time zones.)
So here’s how you do the math for us:
Take the time the polls close (in the specific state, county, etc.).
ADD TWO HOURS
That’s your result — when we should have results.
(I know; math is hard.)
Mainland France is in a single time zone.
Also, from what I’ve read, the two hour results in France are in fact media projections, same as in the US. And we have no idea if their elections personnel are any more trustworthy than those in the US are.
Again, logistically, I don’t think we can expect 150+ million paper ballots with multiple federal, state and county offices to be counted in two hours. Not with scanners and most certainly not by hand count.
Time constraints will introduce more error, chaos and opportunity to fiddle than not.
The one thing France does right is voting on a weekend. We should also move our general election to September and stop voting in bad weather.