Editing 2382: Ballot Tracker Tracker

{{comic
| number    = 2382
| date      = November 6, 2020
| title     = Ballot Tracker Tracker
| image     = ballot_tracker_tracker.png
| titletext = Good luck to Democrats in the upcoming Georgia runoff elections, and to the Google Sheets SREs in the current run-on elections.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BALLOT TRACKER TRACKER TRACKER. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic was posted 3 days after the 2020 election day in the United States (November 3, 2020). As of the date of posting, the {{w|2020 United States presidential election}} still had not been "called" for either candidate, President {{w|Donald Trump}}, or the challenger, former Vice President {{w|Joe Biden}} by most news outlets. (Decision Desk HQ did project the election for Biden that day, and analyst Nate Silver had stated on Twitter that Trump had no path to victory.) This is atypical for most US presidential elections, which were "called" either on election day or on the morning following.

A major reason for the delay in deciding the results of the election is the greatly increased use of {{w|mail-in ballot}}s, caused by social distancing concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mail-in ballots in some states were counted after the in-person voting, which has caused delays in the vote-counting. 

As of the date of posting, the electoral vote counts - as called by most major news organizations - were 253-214 in favor of Biden, with 270 electoral votes needed to win the election. Six states were considered "too close to call", with no determined winner until more ballots were counted.  Biden was winning the popular vote by about 4 million.

Cueball in this comic has created an app or a website that tracks in real-time how fast "ballot trackers" update. A ballot tracker is a government site that lets individuals check whether their mail-in ballot has been received and accepted or rejected. Voters who mailed their ballot on or shortly before election day are anxiously waiting to see whether it arrived on time, but ballot tracking sites do not update very frequently. The date this comic was posted was the deadline in some states for ballots to be received or for rejected ballots to be corrected.

Randall may instead have meant to refer to news organizations, which are constantly updating reported vote counts as they are published by the states. Some news organizations also have [https://web.archive.org/web/20201107022852/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/upshot/network-race-call-tracker.html "ballot tracker trackers"] which are tracking how other news organizations are tracking ballots. Cueball (representing Randall) is anxiously waiting for a resolution to this long election season and is constantly checking to see if the race has been decided yet. 

The last line of dialogue in the comic, where Cueball says, "I will breathe when they call it" may refer to the idea that many people hold their breaths when waiting for an important result, so people may hold their breaths until the president (or state result?) is called. However, since this time around the announcement could take days if not weeks, holding one's breath until the winner is announced is a bad idea{{Citation needed}}.

In the title text, Randall wishes good luck to the Democrats in the state of Georgia who are running in later run-off elections. Two Senate seats were being voted on in the state of Georgia in 2020, but no candidate achieved over 50% of the vote in either race. It is highly likely that these runoffs will determine control of the Senate. By law in the state of Georgia, these two races will be decided in "runoff" elections, where the top two candidates from each of the races run against only each other, on January 5, 2021. Randall also wishes good luck to the SREs (probably {{w|Site Reliability Engineer}}s) of Google Sheets, an online spreadsheet program, who are in charge of maintaining the Google infrastructure while people like him are constantly refreshing their sheets and pulling data. Randall is comparing Georgia's upcoming "runoff" election to the current election, calling it a "run-on" for how long it is taking.

The theme of recursive naming is a recurring one in xkcd, most recently with the "contact tracer tracing program" in [[2376: Curbside]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting behind a desk, pointing at a laptop. White Hat is standing behind him. Crumpled up papers are strewn across the ground. ]
:Cueball: And this tab is my ballot tracker tracker, which tracks how quickly other ballot trackers update.
:White Hat: You should add a tracker for how often you breathe so you don't forget.
:Cueball: '''''I will breathe when they call it.'''''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Elections]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]