Election Day is underway across the United States, but official results determining control of Congress may not be known for days or even weeks, according to reporting from TIME.
The timeline for announcing election outcomes depends heavily on individual states, which the U.S. Constitution empowers to establish their own election and ballot-counting procedures. Some states, like Florida, are known for quicker tabulation, while others, such as California and Alaska, typically require more time due to their size and, in Alaska's case, the use of ranked-choice voting.
Mitch Brown, a political science professor at Auburn University, noted that it could take up to 30 days for all states to officially certify their results. It is important to distinguish between projections made by media outlets on election night and the official results released by states, which often take longer to verify.
"It's really important for everyone to understand that what happens on election night when we're watching TV or looking online, and we're seeing races called, those are predictions by media outlets. They're not the official results," said Chris Mann, research director at The Center for Election Innovation & Research. "With close elections, we may end up not knowing who the winner is until we get to those official certifications that every vote has been counted."
Polls close at various times across the country, generally between 7 p.m. and 1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, depending on the state. Some locations may experience slight delays or extensions due to technical issues.
Ballot Counting and Delays
After polls close, states must verify and count all cast ballots, including in-person, early, mail-in, and provisional votes. Some ballots are counted at polling locations, while others are transported to county counting facilities. Provisional ballots, used when a voter's eligibility needs further verification, can add time to the tallying process. Additionally, 14 states and Washington D.C. allow ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if received within a specific post-election window, further extending the timeline.
The speed of vote tabulation can be influenced by several factors. In close races, media outlets may delay calling a winner until nearly all votes are counted, as the margin of victory is too narrow for a confident projection. "If there is a high margin of victory, they can make that projection sooner," Wren Orey of the Bipartisan Policy Center explained. "Whenever there's a very narrow margin of victory, that means that election officials need to process and report more results before a media outlet can be confident projecting a winner."
Physical factors, such as the vast distances in states like Alaska, can also cause delays. State laws, such as ranked-choice voting used in Alaska and Maine, introduce complexity that can require multiple rounds of counting or recounts, especially in tight contests. Other states, like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, prohibit the preparation of mailed ballots for scanning until Election Day, which can slow down the process when dealing with hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots.
Election Integrity
Experts emphasize that the extended time needed to finalize results is standard procedure and not an indicator of fraud. "The thing that I would hammer home is not knowing an official result the day of the election, the day after the election, even a week after the election, is not evidence of fraud," Mitchell stated. Mann added, "Elections are more secure, more accurate than they have ever been."