Reporter's Notebook: The hard stuff is yet to come

I've lost track of how many times people have asked if I will be glad when the election is over. 

Truth be told, just after the election is when the hard stuff begins.

Election Day is Tuesday, but in reality, that's just the beginning of the process. It may take days to sort out who voters have chosen as president. Control of the House is razor tight. It may boil down to a handful of races decided by a grand total of several thousand votes. So don't for a moment think we automatically know which party will be in the majority as election officials sort all of that out. There's a scenario where a thin margin of contested seats in the House could spring several weeks of challenges. 

Moreover, Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution dictates that the House and Senate "shall be the Judge of the elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members." And it's the new House in the new Congress next year that will decide whether to seat people if there's a dispute.

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Of course, that's provided the House can elect a speaker when the new Congress is constitutionally mandated to begin on Jan. 3. Don't forget that House Republicans incinerated a total of 27 days on two separate occasions to elect former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and current Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

We'll come back to that in a moment.