Topline

Americans may have to wait days to know the outcome of the presidential election if the vote count in battleground states is as close as polls suggest, as several key swing states do not allow officials to begin processing or counting mail-in mail-ins ballots until Election Day. meaning it could take days to know who won.

Key facts

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Slowest Battleground States for Counting Postal Votes

Pennsylvania: The state will be among the slowest to release the results of mail-in ballots because officials cannot begin processing absentee ballots (taking steps such as removing ballots from envelopes and verifying them) until the morning of Election Day of voter signatures) and cannot register a single vote. totals until after polls close at 8 p.m

Wisconsin: Wisconsin also won’t start processing its mail-in ballots until Election Day, meaning it will take longer to report results.

Battleground states that will start counting on Election Day but need to announce results more quickly

Georgia: Officials in Georgia have already begun counting mail-in ballots — allowed beginning the third Monday before Election Day — and state law allows ballots to be counted at 7 a.m. on Election Day. That means at least partial results will likely be reported by the time the polls close. The state election board adopted new rules that could have slowed the tabulation process, including adding a hand-counting requirement for ballots, but the Georgia Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that those requirements remain blocked for now.

North Carolina: The state will begin processing mail-in ballots before Election Day and will begin counting absentee ballots on Election Day before polls close — sometime between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. under state law, with counties passing resolutions before Election Day stating when they will vote. specifically start counting. The state election board said in February that absentee ballots returned should be counted before Election Day that evening, although it could take longer for ballots to be returned on Election Day. However, North Carolina has passed a new voting law that requires officials to wait to count in-person early ballots until polls close on Election Day, which could delay those election night results by about an hour.

Battleground states are counting ballots before Election Day

Arizona: The state will begin counting early ballots as they are received, even if that is before Election Day. However, the state’s counting could still be delayed by an ordinance that requires officials to wait until polls have closed and all voters have left until they retrieve ballots left in the polls on Election Day. That could be a significant portion of votes, with the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office noting that these ballots made up 20% of all ballots in the county in the 2022 general election. Election results could also be delayed as officials close the ballots on Election Day must process and verify signatures before sending them out to be counted, which Maricopa County — the state’s most populous county — said took until the Sunday after Election Day to complete. 2022.

Michigan: Michigan lawmakers passed a new law after the 2020 election that now allows absentee ballots to be counted eight days before Election Day, or the day before Election Day for cities with fewer than 5,000 residents. That means many results will likely be reported quickly across the state once polls close.

Nevada: Unlike 2020, the state now allows mail-in ballots to be counted 15 days before Election Day, and officials can count ballots as they arrive on Election Day. That means results will likely come out more quickly than in 2020, when it took several days for the state’s race to be called for President Joe Biden.

What we don’t know

Exactly how long it will take for postal votes to be counted. Voters will likely rely less on mail-in voting in this election than in 2020, when many voters cast ballots by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, that presidential election took days to break out, as Biden secured only a narrow victory that required the bulk of mail-in ballots to be counted for mail-in voting. That said, states are still reporting large numbers of requests for absentee ballots — including about 716,000 in Wisconsin and 1.9 million in Pennsylvania, the two slowest states in reporting — suggesting that counting ballots could still take a while .

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