When will mail-in and absentee ballots be counted?

Candidates for president and vice president of the US, Democrats Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and Republicans mild President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, are viewed on half of a mail-in election ballotin Original York on Sunday. Patrick Sison/AP conceal caption

toggle caption

Patrick Sison/AP

Election Day is this Tuesday, nonetheless for diverse reasons, we might well well additionally no longer bag the consequences that evening.

One such preserve-up is the work it takes to process and depend mail-in ballots.

Most U.S. states present some construct of early in-person voting and mail-in voting for all voters, and tens of millions of voters recognize solid ballots early this year.

On account of every tell has assorted principles regarding the timeline for processing and counting mail-in ballots, many election officers can’t commence tabulating these ballots till Election Day or even after the polls halt that evening.

Make positive you are aware of when your tell begins processing and counting mail-in ballots.

And endure in thoughts to sit down down tight and halt quiet as outcomes at final terminate will doubtless be found in in.

An individual drops off a mail ballotat a descend field in the route of most main election voting on Might well maybe 21 in Portland, Ore. Jenny Kane/AP/AP conceal caption

toggle caption

Jenny Kane/AP/AP

Local licensed guidelines restrict when election officers can process ballots

Absentee and mail-in ballots recognize to be processed sooner than they’re going to be counted.

The technique of going by mailed ballots varies by tell, per the Nationwide Convention of Remark Legislatures. On the complete, it contains quite lots of steps: checking the ballotenvelope, verifying that the signature on the return envelope matches the voter’s signature on file, opening the envelope, and making piquant the ballotfor counting. In most states, officers can’t feed the ballotinto the tabulator till the polls halt on Election Day.

Absentee and mail ballots ought to unruffled be processed sooner than they’re going to be tallied.

• Forty-three states and the Virgin Islands enable election officers to commence up processing these early ballots sooner than Election Day.
• In Connecticut and Ohioelection officers can resolve to commence processing early ballots sooner than at their discretion.
• In seven states — Alabama, Mississippi, Original Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin, besides Washington, D.C., — mailed-in ballots will doubtless be processed on Election Day and sooner than the polls halt.

Mail ballots normally require extra time and sources to process than in-person votes, especially when there’s an attractive quantity, as turned into as soon as the case in the 2020 election. The runt time out there for processing ballots on Election Day can exacerbate delays. This bother grew to become particularly pronounced in the route of the pandemic when licensed guidelines were modified to enable extra of us to vote early, main to indispensable challenges for election workers going by absentee and mail ballots.

In 2020, Kathleen Hale, the director of Auburn University’s Election Administration Initiative, if truth be told handy NPR to mediate this process admire the vacation season, when receiving items and writing thank-you notes.

“Perchance you might well well normally get 10 items and write thank-you notes for every of the items. Simplest now you might well well additionally be going to get a thousand of them,” Hale talked about. “The technical steps don’t seem like terribly no longer easy — there might be exclusively a protracted sequence that has to happen.”

Allegheny County Election Division Deputy Supervisor Chet Harhut carries a container of mail-in ballots from a exact apartment on the elections warehouse in Pittsburgh on April 18. Gene J. Puskar/AP/AP conceal caption

toggle caption

Gene J. Puskar/AP/AP

OK, nonetheless when are these ballots counted and the consequences known?

Counting, tallying and tabulating are phrases that states use to record the technique of scanning ballots by their voting machines, per the NCSL.

Most states commence up the tabulation of mail ballots on Election Day, even supposing there are some indispensable variations amongst them. In positive states, it is in opposition to the law to half outcomes from mail-in ballots sooner than the polls halt, which normally occurs between 6 p.m. ET and 12 a.m. ET.

Essentially essentially based on the NCSL, these are the timelines for states to commence up tabulating early ballots.

The 14 states that invent no longer enable counting to commence up till polls halt

• Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Original Hampshire, Original Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington and Washington, D.C.

The 23 states that mandate counting commence up on Election Day sooner than polls halt

• Arkansas, California, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Original York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The 12 states that enable processing and counting to commence sooner than Election Day:

• Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Original Jersey, Virginia and Utah.

Connecticut enables local registrars of voters to set up when to commence counting ballots, per the NCSL. In the Virgin Islands, counting begins after absentee ballots were processed, though the categorical timing is no longer specified. Puerto Rico does no longer point to when counting can commence up.