It’s election night, an American tradition. All eyes are glued to television screens and Twitter feeds and a reliable website or two.

As the evening progresses, states are called for this candidate or that. A counter in one corner of the screen tracks the national popular vote, interesting but not decisive. While the state-by-state map starts to fill in with red and blue. The electoral vote tabulator is all important. As the hours go by, attention focuses even more on those states too close to call. The best analysts break it down by which counties are still outstanding and which way they have historically tilted.

Come some point late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, the pattern is clear and the final call is made as to which candidate has been elected president of these United States. Concession and victory speeches follow.

True, it is not always so clean-cut. Flash back to the Truman-Dewey reversal in 1948; or Bush and Gore and Florida in 2000. Even in those cases, with the narrowness and contentiousness of the latter, certain norms were maintained and the dispute was peacefully, legitimately resolved.

In every instance, the loser conceded, no matter how clenched his or her teeth. When a sitting president was defeated, there was a peaceful transition of power, the ultimate hallmark of our democracy. Often, that transition was not only peaceful, but profoundly gracious. Think of the note left by a vanquished George H.W. Bush to greet Bill Clinton upon his arrival in the Oval Office.

Now think of what may unfold this November; perhaps extending well into December or even January.

We are told over and again that this is the most important election in our lifetime. That is not a claim unique to this year. However, this time it might be truthful. That said, the campaign itself may pale in comparison to an ugly aftermath quite unlike anything we have witnessed.

Some vote-counting delay is almost assured. More distressing, the ground is ripe for post-election mischief and partisan warfare without bounds. Both parties have given ample indication of their willingness to go there in this take-no-prisoners, by-any-means-necessary era.

Given the intensity of the fight that has developed over just the last week for a Supreme Court seat, is there any doubt as to how unrelenting and even unaccepting both parties will be when it comes to this ultimate seat of power?

Colorado and a handful of other states are used to mail-in voting and process the count rather efficiently. But many states lack that experience and the infrastructure to quickly tabulate the mass of mail ballots coming their way amidst a pandemic.

Were a delay the only hurdle, so be it and a modicum of patience would be the tonic. But some lag time is just the beginning of the potential problems, not the totality of them.

Imagine an overly partisan cable network making a premature call of the winner based largely on votes cast in-person on election day without sufficient counting of ballots in the mail. Imagine the president declaring victory based on that same very partial information.

Or envision any of a litany of other factors — from a large-scale breakdown in the Postal Service to the dispatching of troops to some polling sites with the effect of deterring voter participation to an inevitable glitch here or inconsequential instance of fraud there, breathlessly amplified beyond all proportion by partisan media.

Both campaigns have plentiful legal talent at this disposal and will hold nothing back. Try to conceive of the reaction were this election to again go all the way to the Supreme Court, but this time with the deciding vote being cast by the newly sworn-in justice rushed through the Senate on a partisan basis.

There are other scenarios to contemplate involving state legislatures certifying alternate slates of electors or the whole thing landing in the lap of the House of Representatives, where each state is allotted a single vote. And so on. I am not a lawyer and yet my head hurts.

Further, while perfectly Constitutional and in line with how the game is played, anticipate the reaction were Donald Trump to be elected a second time with an Electoral College majority but a notable deficit in the popular vote. That would make three out of the last six presidential elections with such an outcome.

Add to the toxic brew the fact that Trump has repeatedly refused to pledge to concede if the results are not to his liking after taking the same surly stance four years ago. There is nothing in his personality that leads one to picture a decorous concession and transition. Should the shoe rest on the other foot, plenty of Democratic honchos are urging Joe Biden to avoid a concession so long as there is any path available, no matter how tortured.

Both sides regard this election as nothing less than all-out war. The fever pitch is constant within the media bubbles occupied zealously by so many on both ends. If the outcome of this election is at all in doubt, imagine the gasoline that will be poured on the mess by the likes of Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow. Along with the algorithmic agitation on the newsfeeds of true-believers on the right and left.

The social observer David Brooks recently commented that both sides approach this election in apocalyptic terms. Democrats believe that nothing less than our constitutional republic is proverbial toast if Trump is reelected. While Republicans contend with equal fervor that a socialist state is but a Biden victory away.

With both sides painting in such ominous colors and with any communal goodwill a bygone relic, added to the possibility of a prolonged period of uncertainty and treachery in the aftermath, the prospect of civil unrest and actual violence in the streets is not so far-fetched.

Our democratic institutions are not endlessly elastic. They have been stretched and stretched over a number of decades. In the context of this miserable year, this election and what comes after may prove the most severe test.

If America can weather these weeks between now and Jan. 20 with some baseline of social and political cohesion, it will constitute a major bullet dodged.