Counting the votes

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 5th of November.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up first, Election Day!

Today, Americans head to the polls, the final day for many to vote, though more than 80 million voters have done so already.

The votes now in represent more than half of the total ballots cast in 2016.

Of course, we’ll tell you what we know about the result tomorrow, but in the meantime, you can keep up with the news in WORLD’s Election Center. We’ll have a live election map with updated numbers from all the races—and our reporters will be chugging coffee and posting stories with results as we get them.

Check it out at https://wng.org/election2024.

REICHARD: Well, in 2020, it took four days after Election Day before the presidential race was called … and the key was Joe Biden securing Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes…and crossing the 270-vote threshold in the electoral college.

This time, many expect a similar timeline.

LIEWER: We do expect that it will take between 10 and 13 days to complete tabulation of all of the ballots that come in.

EICHER: That’s Jennifer Liewer, a spokeswoman for the board of elections in Maricopa County, Arizona.

From WORLD’s Washington Bureau, Carolina Lumetta reports.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: Once the votes are in, the race to count them begins …with millions watching.

CBS NORAH O’DONNELL: Polls have now closed in nine states across America. Neither candidate has any electoral votes in that race to 270 because it is still very early in the counting.

In 2020, results for the presidential election trickled in over several days while poll workers methodically tallied a record number of mail-in ballots.

DEGRAFFENREID: I was there in Pennsylvania when the counties were canvassing.

Veronica Degraffenreid was an election adviser for Pennsylvania in 2020 and then acting Secretary of the Commonwealth. She previously oversaw election operations in North Carolina…and now works at the Brennan Center for Justice.

This year, some campaign officials expect the vote count process to be quicker, but we still likely won’t get results on the presidential contest tonight.

DEGRAFFENREID: No contest is final on election night. That is the unofficial count.

During the night, news networks will announce projected winners for races across the country based on those unofficial counts, exit polls, and statistics about total eligible voters. Many news outlets across the country, including WORLD, rely on the Associated Press to call races…and AP typically makes projections before 100% of the ballots are counted.

OHLEMACHER: At the Associated Press, we declare winners on election night when we determine that there is no path for the trailing candidates to catch the leader.

But the official tally is a separate number and takes longer to tabulate…

Ballots cast in person on Election Day are easiest to count, since they just need to be run through an electronic tabulator. But mail-in votes come with extra steps…

DEGRAFFENREID: So they're going through making sure that this is a ballot that can be approved for counting and then they can remove the ballot from the various envelopes.

Add to that verifying signatures and voter information. And making sure absentee voters didn’t also cast provisional ballots in person.

DEGRAFFENREID: And then they have to be fed into the tabulator. So that just takes time.

States have different rules for when election workers can process those ballots.

DEGRAFFENREID: Some states like Arizona and Georgia, and Michigan, North Carolina allow their election officials to begin pre-processing those mail ballots prior to election day.

Georgia changed its rules in 2021 to allow election workers to sort absentee ballots before Election Day. And Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced a strict timeline for counting those ballots before tabulating the in-person votes. Here’s Raffensperger at an election eve news conference in Atlanta yesterday:

RAFFENSPERGER: All these people that have voted early – that's about 65% expected votes – will be reported one hour after the polls close…

Other states, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in particular, had to wait until today to start processing the millions of mail-in ballots received. Here’s Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt.

AL SCHMIDT: Nearly two million mail-in ballots have already been returned for this election. And state law doesn’t permit counties in Pennsylvania to begin opening these ballots until 7 a.m. on election morning… which is the same time those officials will also be running more than 9,100 polling places across the commonwealth for in person voting.

Pennsylvania took four days to count votes in 2020, and while its ballot processing rules are the same, officials are hoping to speed up the timeline this year by boosting funding for election workers. Erie County spent $900,000 dollars to hire more staff and buy new equipment, including automatic letter openers.

DEGRAFFENREID: Automatic letter openers, who knew? It is a thing.

These machines can slice open hundreds of envelopes in minutes, and Degraffenreid says that small improvement can speed up the process.

DEGRAFFENREID: Do I believe that they will be done sooner than Saturday? I do, I do. And again, because they have taken additional measures and invested some resources in ensuring that they can get all of the results in a lot quicker. But it does take some time.

Each state has its own deadlines for finishing the vote count, but a federal law from 2022 requires every state to certify its presidential vote and identify its electors by December 11. On December 17th, those electors will cast Electoral College votes at the state capitols and then send them along to Washington. On January 6th, Congress will convene to certify the nationwide Electoral College vote.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

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