Head of Fox News Decision Desk says there’s nothing nefarious about vote counting delays

Arnon Mishkin drew the ire of Republicans in 2020 for correctly calling Arizona for Joe Biden

The head of the Fox News Decision Desk said on Tuesday that there was nothing nefarious about delays in counting votes in battleground states.

Arnon Mishkin, talking to Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum’s podcast, refuted the claim often made by former president Donald Trump and many Fox contributors.

“It absolutely leads to questions,” he said, The Hill reported. “And people can exploit those differences for whatever reason. There’s nothing to it other than that these election officials are counting based on the rules in place.”

Commenting on states such as Pennsylvania, where it will take some days to count all the ballots, Mr Mishkin said that part of the reason for those delays is because “you don’t want people opening the vote before Election Day and finding out, oh, we’re behind or so-and-so is behind so that they can go stop them, you know, get other people to the polls.”

“And some of it is just that, you know, this is how America has chosen to vote. And the election officials in the state rules should adapt to fix that and make sure that that it can be done in a timely manner, because timely results, as you point out, are really important,” he said.

Mishkin came under fire from Republicans in 2020 when the Fox News Decision Desk correctly called the state of Arizona for Joe Biden.  That call prompted Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and White House advisor, to call Fox owner Rupert Murdoch in an effort to reverse the call.

In his memoir, Mr Kushner said Mr Murdoch rejected the plea.

“Sorry, Jared, there is nothing I can do,” Mr Kushner quoted Mr Murdoch as saying. “The Fox News data authority says the numbers are ironclad — he says it won’t be close.”