These Key Swing States Don’t Count Mail Ballots In Advance—Results May Take Days

Topline

Americans may be waiting days to know the outcome of the presidential election if the vote count is as close in battleground states as polling suggests, as several key swing states don’t allow officials to start processing or counting mail-in ballots until Election Day—meaning it could take days to know who won.

Key Facts

Polling suggests Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are neck-and-neck in battleground states, so it could take a while to determine a winner if it comes down to a small number of votes.

According to a polling average compiled by FiveThirtyEight, Harris is 1.2 points ahead of Trump in the polls nationally (48.1% support versus 46.3% support) and polling in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin suggest the candidates are virtually tied in the states that are most important for the Electoral College.

While in-person votes are reported quicker on election night, mail-in ballots take longer to count, which Trump took advantage of in 2020 to undermine faith in the election results, claiming victory on election night before all ballots were counted.

His campaign also made baseless fraud claims involving mail-in ballots and challenged how the votes were tabulated, including by filing lawsuits taking issue with the counting process.

If election results prove to be razor-thin, voters should not expect to know the winner of a state until the vast majority of ballots are counted or reputable outlets call a winner based on the available results, and it’s possible initial results could show one candidate ahead, only for the other candidate to ultimately be called the winner after more votes are tallied.

Slowest Battleground States For Counting Mail Votes

Pennsylvania: The state will be one of the slowest to release results from mail-in ballots because officials can’t start processing absentee ballots—taking steps like removing ballots from envelopes and verifying voter signatures—until the morning of Election Day, and cannot record any vote totals until after polls close at 8 p.m.

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

Battleground States That Start Counting On Election Day—but Should Release Results Quicker

Georgia: Officials in Georgia have already started processing mail-in ballots—it’s allowed starting the third Monday before Election Day—and ballots can start being counted at 7 a.m. on Election Day under state law. That means there will likely be at least partial results to report by the time polls close. The state election board passed new rules that could have delayed the tabulation process, including adding a hand-count requirement for ballots, but the Georgia Supreme Court ruled those requirements will remain blocked for now.

North Carolina: The state starts processing mail-in ballots before Election Day and will begin counting its absentee ballots on Election Day before the polls close—anywhere between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. under state law, with counties adopting resolutions before Election Day that state when they’ll specifically start counting. The state’s election board said in February its processes mean absentee ballots returned before Election Day should be counted by that evening, though ballots returned on Election Day could take longer. North Carolina passed a new voting law that requires officials to hold off on counting in-person early voting ballots until polls close on Election Day, however, which could slightly delay those results by around an hour on election night.

Battleground States That Count Mail Ballots Before Election Day—but Might Be Slow

Arizona: The state starts counting early mail-in ballots when they’re received, even if that’s prior to Election Day. The state’s counting could still get slowed down by a regulation that requires officials to wait until polls are closed and all voters have left until they collect ballots that were left in ballot drop boxes on Election Day, however. That could be a sizable share of the vote, with the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office noting those ballots made up 20% of all the county’s ballots in the 2022 general election. Election results could also be slowed down as officials have to process Election Day mail-in ballots and verify signatures before sending them off to be counted, which Maricopa County—the state’s most populous county—said took until the Sunday after Election Day to complete in 2022.

Michigan: Michigan lawmakers passed a new law after the 2020 election that now allows absentee votes to start being counted eight days before Election Day, or the day before Election Day for towns with fewer than 5,000 people. That means many results are likely to be quickly reported in the state once polls close.

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

What We Don’t Know

How long it will take exactly for mail-in votes to be counted. Voters are likely to be less reliant on mail-in voting in this election than they were in 2020, when many voters cast their ballots by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It took days to call that presidential election as a result, as Biden pulled off only a narrow win that required counting most of the mail-in ballots to call. That being said, states are still reporting high numbers of requests for absentee ballots—including approximately 716,000 in Wisconsin and 1.9 million in Pennsylvania, the two slowest states for reporting—suggesting ballots could still take a while to count.

Further Reading