Kenneth Blackwell

The reason it takes us from November the second to December the sixth to certify is because we have a very tedious, very comprehensive process where we audit by precinct, across the state, every vote that was cast to make sure that every vote that was legally cast is counted.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.