It’s Here: What to Know for Election Day and Beyond
Election Day is here. Millions of ballots have already been cast, setting the stage for one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history.
Today, voters across the country will determine the makeup of Congress, along with a host of other statewide and local offices. Most importantly, this election will decide who becomes the next U.S. president. Officials aren’t just preparing for Nov. 5, but for the days, weeks and months that it will take to count, canvass and certify the results.
Here’s what you should know as you head to the polls and await the outcome.
Millions of people vote early — but some states don’t count until Election Day
Early voting has spurred voters to the polls in record numbers. North Carolina set a record for the number of ballots cast on the first day of early voting, and surpassed two million votes last week. “This is the most important vote of their lifetime,” North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall told Democracy Docket Tuesday, noting that the state has now exceeded 3 million votes.
Each state runs elections differently. Check your local government website to find out when polls open and close, and the deadlines for early voting.
At the polls, don’t be alarmed if you see observers. Political parties appoint poll watchers, usually volunteers, who monitor the election process. Each state has different rules governing how they can observe.
Although most states — 43 — allow jurisdictions to begin processing absentee and mail-in ballots before Election Day, some states won’t count until Election Day. North Carolina, for instance, mandates that vote-counting start after the polls close at 7:30 p.m. “In Wisconsin, you can’t start opening mail-in ballots until 8 a.m. on Election day,” said Reid Ribble, a former Wisconsin representative who serves on the Wisconsin advisory council for the nonprofit Keep Our Republic. “And so [that’s] going to take some time and people have to understand the process.”
Ribble, who spoke to reporters at an Oct. 25 briefing, explained how painstaking the process can be. Once a clerk opens a mail-in ballot, they must “separate the envelope from the ballot. The ballot has to be moved to a separate place for tabulation so that there’s no connection between the voter and the ballot and the privacy and secrecy of your ballot stays protected. It’s going to take some time.”
Pennsylvania is also a prime example. Days after the 2020 presidential election, then-incumbent President Donald Trump’s lead over Joe Biden in Pennsylvania was dwindling and the gap continued to shrink as election workers counted millions of ballots after the polls closed.
Eventually Biden won the battleground state’s 20 Electoral Votes, getting a boost from mail-in ballots, most of which favored Biden. Experts called it the “Blue Shift,” which essentially means that because Democrats tend to vote by mail, the high volume of mail-in ballots ended up helping Biden. In 2020, largely due to the pandemic, more people voted early or by mail than in person.
But the shift, preceded by Trump’s claims that the election would be rigged, fueled misinformation and allegations of voter fraud. In the months leading up to November, Trump has still claimed to have won 2020 despite losing to Biden. A recent CNN poll found that a majority of registered voters who responded to the survey don’t think Trump will concede if he loses.
Kathy Boockvar, former Pennsylvania secretary of state, told Democracy Docket that election officials and those tasked with informing voters have to be both “proactive and reactive. We have to do better at getting out information ahead of time, but then we also have to be reactive to crazy allegations in the moment.”
What happens after the votes have been counted?
Once cities, counties and jurisdictions tabulate the results, the canvassing period begins, typically a week or so after Election Day.
This is when election officials review and confirm the accuracy of each ballot, including provisional, challenged and overseas ballots. In Michigan, for example, each county and the state has a board of canvassers tasked with inspecting and eventually certifying the results.
“There’s a reason why certification deadlines in most states are weeks after Election Day,” Boockvar said. “And the reason for it is because we want to make sure that our elections are accurate. So we have this built-in time period where we’re not only canvassing the ballots openly, publicly with bipartisan oversight, but we also have two different audits in Pennsylvania, one at the county level and one at the state level and all those things [happen] during that period.”
Election boards are required to certify the results. Allegations of fraud or ballot issues that otherwise can’t be resolved by election officials are typically litigated in the courts. But in the wake of the 2020 and 2022 elections, concerns surrounding certification have intensified as board members question their own duty to certify.
In Georgia, a judge ruled in October that certifying election results is a mandatory duty after a county election official filed a lawsuit arguing that individual members can certify at their own discretion.
“In every circumstance the court has done exactly what it should do,” Boockvar said. “The courts have mandated that election officials certify the results. These are non-discretionary duties.”
She added there could be legal consequences for officials who refuse to certify, but, “The overwhelming majority of election officials are some of the hardest working, dedicated human beings on the planet who are never even going to consider this.”
There’s a timeline for when the certification process must be completed. Each state appoints a slate of electors who will cast the state’s electoral votes for president and vice president. This year, those names must be submitted to Congress no later than Dec. 11. The electors are then expected to meet in their states on Dec. 17. And the final deadline for the votes to be sent to Congress is Dec. 25. Perhaps the most important two days of the election are Jan. 6 — when Congress convenes to certify — and inauguration Jan. 20.
In the meantime, look to election officials and other trusted sources for accurate information on the results and the process. Democracy Docket will be monitoring the courts and tracking election and voting-related lawsuits.
Learn more about how states maintain their lists of registered voters.