Posted on by

How long do election results take? What you should know for 2024

How long do election results take? What you should know for 2024

play

Election Day is November 5th, less than a month away. What isn’t so obvious is when the results of the presidential race will be announced – and that depends on a variety of factors. Every state handles its elections differently, from weeks of early voting to strict voter ID laws.

What we do know is that both Republicans and Democrats are preparing for a barrage of legal challenges until after the general election.

More: A flood of lawsuits over state voting rules could affect the 2024 election results

Expect delays in November

Since the last presidential election in 2020, many of the sweeping election laws and voting access changes made in response to the coronavirus pandemic have faced polarized legislatures and become a source of division.

Now voters in key states like North Carolina are dealing with the fallout from devastating Hurricane Helene, with early voting less than a week away.

Other key swing states that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are competing for, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, will not be allowed to begin processing absentee and absentee ballots until Election Day, which is expected to slow counting.

More: ‘Sound the alarm’: Election officials warn that mail delays could cause mailed ballots to be invalidated

Four days in 2020

The coronavirus pandemic presented poll workers and voters with a number of new challenges in 2020.

States worked to expand access to voting as the country suffered from the airborne virus, introducing or extending early voting and mail-in voting. In many ways, this made it easier to vote for people who, in addition to the restrictions and fears during the pandemic, may not have had the time or means to vote beforehand.

Despite often easier access to voting in 2020, counting those ballots was a different story.

In many states, early counting of ballots could not begin until Election Day, in others after 18 days, but the results could not be announced until after polls closed.

According to the Pew Research Center, in the 2020 election, the high number of voters (46%) who used absentee or absentee ballots led to millions of ballot backlogs nationwide. This led to delays in reporting results in several swing states and provided an opportunity for Trump and his supporters to spread voter fraud conspiracies.

It took four days for all the votes to be counted, resulting in Joe Biden’s victory on November 7th.

play

This is how postal voting and absentee voting work

All 50 states offer some form of absentee or absentee voting.

2016: Quick and easy

The 2016 election was called for Trump in the early hours after Election Day.

The Associated Press made it official at around 2:30 a.m. ET on November 9, 2016.

Take it to Court: Election 2000

It took 35 days, the longest period in modern history, to announce who had won the 2000 presidential election, amounting to just 537 votes.

More: When was the longest election in modern US history?

The contest between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush was fraught with many logistical problems beginning on Election Day 2000, November 7th. These included flawed ballot design, “hanging guys,” allegations of miscounts, and court debates.

The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court with a controversial 5-4 ruling that the Gore campaign had run out of time to propose new recount plans because of the U.S. code’s safe harbor provision. That meant the case ended on December 12, exactly five weeks after Election Day 2000.

It remains a contentious election to this day, decided by a difference of 537 votes.

— Sam Woodward is USA TODAY’s Minnesota elections reporter, focusing on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s candidacy. You can reach them at[email protected].