Fact: Results are never final on Election Day. Election workers need time to ensure all legitimate votes are counted.
The lack of final election results on election night has drawn attention in recent years, but this is not a new phenomenon — results reported by election officials on election night are never complete or final. The numbers voters see on election night are a combination of unofficial totals reported by election officials and projections from the media.
Results are not available on election night for various reasons, including the fact that not all votes have been received by the time polls close. The Constitution allows states to establish their own rules and timelines for when and how votes can be counted. For instance, in some states, mail ballots must be received by Election Day to be counted, while in others, ballots can be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. The 21 states that fall into the second category often do not receive all ballots by the time polls close, and election officials need time to verify these votes are valid and count them. These include ballots from military members deployed overseas.
States also have the right to determine when mail ballots can be processed, which involves verifying those voters’ eligibility and removing the ballots from the envelopes so they are ready to be counted. While most states allow election workers to process mail ballots early, six states — including swing states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — do not allow election workers to begin until Election Day. This wait significantly slows down the pace at which election workers can count mail ballots and release results.
Some ballots that have been submitted on or before Election Day require additional time for verification. For instance, in many states, election workers must notify voters if there are errors on their mail ballot envelopes (such as a missing signature) and give voters time to correct the error. Additionally, when there is some question about a voter’s eligibility — for example, because the voter is at the wrong polling place or there is an administrative error — a voter can cast a provisional ballot. Election workers need additional time to confirm that the voter is eligible before they can count the provisional ballot.
Once all votes have been counted, election officials conduct audits to confirm that vote totals are accurate.
Rumor: The absence of final election results immediately after the polls close is evidence of an attempt to rig the election.
New batches of ballots are added to vote totals in the hours and days following the election, and sometimes those ballots come from groups that vote similarly, such as those voting by mail or those from a certain area. As those batches of ballots are counted, the candidate in the lead often changes, especially in close races. Conspiracy theorists have seized on this fact to falsely claim that election workers are cheating and that ballots counted after polls close are not legitimate.
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We worked with Swayable, a research software platform that measures how effectively media content changes opinions, to determine what messages helped voters best understand the facts.
Suggested counter-messages based on our testing:
- Results are never final on Election Day. States finish counting at different times because the U.S. Constitution gives states the right to decide their own rules on when and how votes can be counted.
The message above was found to be most effective in communicating the facts, though differences exist by region and demographic group. See Swayable’s dashboard to examine more detailed results, including other messages tested.
