Prepare To Wait Awhile for Final Election Results

It ain’t over until the long ballots are (re)counted.

As I write, Americans are trudging to the polls to mark ovals on paper, touch screens, use ballot-marking devices, and otherwise record their choices for president, Congress, state legislatures, and a host of other offices and ballot measures. Around 78 million Americans cast votes before Election Day, many by mail. Different systems are used, according to the preference of each state, and rules vary as to when ballots can be counted and how they're recounted if necessary. If that sounds like it adds a level of complexity to tallying votes, you're right. That's why we'll all probably have to be a little patient before the results of this year's election are finalized.

A Two Week Delay on Votes From One Key County

"The outcome of the presidential race could hinge on Maricopa County, and election officials are warning it could take nearly two weeks to count all the votes," Phoenix's CBS affiliate reported last week. "With more than 2.5 million active voters, Maricopa County is the third-largest voting jurisdiction in the country and one of the most hotly contested areas in the race for the White House. The county expects it will take 10 to 13 days to count all the votes, which is consistent with previous years."

Arizona is a swing state which went for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 by less than 11,000 votes. So, with 2.5 million of the state's 4.368 million voters in one county that's already warned that counting ballots will take awhile, we all could be waiting awhile on some pretty important election results.

Or maybe Americans will have to wait on Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or one of the other swing states. Even if the presidential contest is decided relatively quickly, control of Congress could remain up in the air while we await the outcome of the few House races that are actually in play.

Voting Procedures Vary Across the Country

How votes are cast, processed, and tallied varies from state to state—and even among jurisdictions within some states. According to Verified Voting, which promotes "the responsible use of technology in elections," 69.9 percent of U.S. voters live in jurisdictions that use hand-marked paper ballots. Another 25.1 percent use ballot-marking devices that electronically present options to voters and then print human-readable paper ballots that are tallied. Five percent make use of direct recording electronic systems that are completely digital, with the results stored in computer memory.

While 78 million ballots were cast before Election Day, that doesn't mean they've already been counted. Some states, Arizona included, tally them as they arrive, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, though the results must be kept secret under penalty of law. Those ballots may be cast at early-voting stations or by mail—especially in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington where, Ballotpedia notes, mail-in ballots are the primary means of voting. In other states, though, including such swing states as Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, counting can't begin until Election Day. Early voting in those states makes it easier for voters, but not necessarily for election workers.

Maricopa County's delay, then, isn't a result of a mountain of ballots submitted early, but because of an especially long 2024 ballot, and the laborious process of processing and verifying "early" ballots that are held to the last minute and dropped off on Election Day.

There may be a lot of those last-minute not-so-early ballots because voting this year is daunting. North of Maricopa, in Yavapai County, I counted 13 statewide ballot measures in addition to the various federal, state, and local offices. We also have a local measure, as do other jurisdictions throughout the state. The What's On My Ballot? "pamphlet" looks like an old-fashioned phone book.

"I thought maybe it would take a little bit of time" to fill out, Sophia Tesch told The Washington Post about the Arizona ballot. "It took me 35 minutes."

The long ballot is on two pages, which have to be separately fed into a tabulator to be counted. The machine can jam if it's fed too fast. That requires extra time and patience.

Mail-In Ballots Are Easier To Cast Than To Count

Now, imagine this scenario playing out across the country, especially as mail-in voting has become more popular. While voting early from home makes life much easier for voters, especially when the ballot looks like a Scantron test form, it adds complexity at the receiving end.

"Counting mail-in ballots takes longer because the process involves additional layers of processing and verification that in some states can't begin until Election Day," Time's Simmone Shah wrote in the lead-up to the election. "The ballots themselves have to be unsealed, and verification sometimes involves matching up a signature or photo ID."

Additionally, some states, including Nevada, accept ballots that are postmarked by Election Day. That means the ballots may not all be available to be counted until the end of the week. That shouldn't add any additional thrills to what's already a cliffhanger political season, right?

Recounts May Keep the Fun Going

Then, of course, there's the fact that this presidential election is as close to a 50/50 race as you'll ever see between political candidates, and some of the down-ballot races are similarly tight. Many states have automatic recount laws if vote totals are within a tight margin (0.5 percent in Arizona and Pennsylvania). In other states, candidates can request recounts if the margin is close (0.5 percent in Georgia, 1 percent in North Carolina).

With partisan tensions boiling-point high in the United States, we can assume that nobody is going to miss an opportunity to demand recounts in any races where vote tallies are close and outcomes may depend on the interpretation of disputed ballots. That's especially likely given that trust in election procedures is iffy. Roughly sixty percent of Americans "have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence that ballots cast in the presidential election will be counted accurately in their state or by their local election officials," according to AP-NORC. That drops to 48 percent for the national count.

That said, maybe the polls have been wrong, and this election will be decided by such overwhelming margins that lagging counts in some areas won't matter. Then, recounts will be entirely beside the point. Clear victories could resolve questions about who wins, who loses, and who gets to hold office.

But chances are that we're all going to have to wait awhile to see how this election shakes out.