Here’s why it could take some time to know who won the election

The state and county boards of election are bipartisan, with clear directives for administering, counting, and double checking the millions of ballots they receive. The process takes time because it is thorough, not because there’s fraud. 

The most grueling election season in all of space, time, and history is almost over. But we may still have to show a little more patience.

Some of the elections are going to be close here, including the main event, Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump. If 2024 is anything like 2020, it could be days before a winner is declared. 

Things could also go much faster, of course, but however long the count takes, it is NOT evidence of election fraud or malfeasance. It’s proof of the opposite: that North Carolina’s elections are secure, fair, and accurate. The process takes time because the process is thorough. 

The North Carolina Board of Elections (BOE) has won several awards over the last few years for how they run elections. The state and county boards are bipartisan, with clear directives for administering, counting, and double checking the millions of ballots they will receive. 

In 2020, more than 5.5 million people voted overall. Already this year, more than 3.6 million North Carolinians have voted early or by mail. That’s a lot of ballots to count and verify. 

It took 10 days in 2020 to declare Trump the winner over Joe Biden in North Carolina. The race was so close, that the state was one of the last in the country to be called.

Those 10 days aren’t passive, however. Election officials spend this time, known as the canvassing period, double checking the ballots, confirming voter eligibility, and assessing the validity of provisional ballots.

So here are a few things to know about NC’s vote counting process, when we can expect results, and why all this means the vote is secure no matter what someone says on social media.

And so it starts

Polls close on Election Day (Tuesday, Nov. 5) at 7:30 p.m. If you’re in line by 7:30, stay in line. You’ll be able to vote.

At 7:30 the counting and verification process begins.

Each bipartisan county board of election will start posting to the Election Results Dashboard its preliminary results from early voting ballots and the absentee ballots that arrived before Election Day. 

They used to be able to count these ahead of time, but the Republican-controlled General Assembly voted in 2023 to make them wait until after the polls close. So if you’re upset about how long it takes to count millions of votes all at once, you know who to chirp at.

At 8:30 p.m., the county boards of elections start adding Election Day results to the stream. Be careful not to read too much into early returns, however. With so many votes to count, it’s possible a candidate jumps out to a big lead with 15% of the vote counted, then loses when all of the votes are counted. Some people may try to declare victory based on those early numbers. Ignore them and wait until the end of the game to say who won.

As the night goes on, you’ll see on the dashboard a tracker of the percentage of votes each county has reported. All Election Day vote totals should be posted by 1 a.m. on Wednesday, and Election officials say they expect about 98% of the total ballots to be counted and posted by then. But these are still unofficial results. Military and overseas ballots are accepted up to 10 days after Election Day, which could make a difference in close races.

The State Supreme Court in 2020, for example, was decided by just 401 votes.

So when will we know the outcomes of races? In particularly close races, it could take several days, but in races that have larger margins, it’s likely we’ll know who won on Election Night or the following day, even if those victories are not yet official.

Certify, Certify, Certify!

This counting process will go on through the wee hours, and then comes the certification process, its own lovely, important, but time-consuming thing.

“We have had post-election audits of our tabulation systems in place for every election since 2006,” Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina Board of directors, told reporters last month in a virtual press conference. 

“We have had uniform logic and accuracy processes, where we test the voting equipment before it’s deployed, in place statewide since 2006. So within those bookend points in time, there’s chain of custody of the ballots, chain of custody of the handoff of the voting equipment and the return of these materials.” 

None of the Election Night totals will include provisional ballots, which have to be verified after election day to ensure they are eligible. But hear this now, a provisional ballot does not mean it’s suspicious or fraudulent.

It just means these are the ballots of people who voted in the wrong precinct, or didn’t have a voter ID — which also doesn’t mean they aren’t legally registered — and had to fill out an ID exemption form. The county boards go through each provisional ballot and confirm whether the person is or is not legally registered, and if they are, the ballot is counted. The results of the election are not final until all those eligible provisional ballots are counted.

Hurricane Helene and Voter ID

New changes to election law could also slow the counting process.

Hurricane Helene seems to have had far less of an impact on the election than feared, in large part because elections officials worked nearly nonstop since the storm to ensure voters could vote. 

The North Carolina State Board of Elections and General Assembly passed several changes to voting in the counties most affected, adjusting the number, locations and hours of early voting sites as needed. 

One of the changes will help more displaced North Carolinians voters, but may also prolong the results. Voters in these counties this year are allowed to drop off their absentee ballots at election offices and early voting sites outside their home county. The ballots will then be delivered to their county board of election for counting. Those ballots WILL be counted, the BOE says, but they will NOT be counted on Election Night.

And because this is the first presidential election in which a Voter ID is needed, the BOE also expects there to be more provisional ballots than usual from people filing out ID exception forms, which could also mean close races will remain too close to call for longer.

What happens after the votes are counted?

Each of the state’s 100 counties conduct audits to verify the results across early voting, mailed in ballots, and those that came in on Election Day. They then pass the certified results to the State Board which goes through its own auditing process. 

Other NC officials have a couple of procedural roles in the results process. Once the State Board of Elections certifies the results, they deliver them to the Secretary of State, who in turn provides the NC winners of the presidency to the governor’s office, and arranges the meeting of the North Carolina Electoral College.

‘We know how to conduct an election’

If state election officials can handle a pandemic and a hurricane, they can handle anything that comes up after Election Day.

“We have longstanding processes in North Carolina to secure our elections,” Brinson Bell said, and “that’s not changing because it’s a presidential election, that’s not changing because of devastation from a storm.”

In fact, she said, “it probably makes us even more diligent.”

Paul Cox, general counsel to BOE, urged voters to ignore any wild online claims of election fraud based on zero evidence.

“We are in a closely contested national election right now,” Cox said. 

“There are a lot of people out there that want to put all sorts of things on social media just to get a click or a like, or a subscribe or whatever it may be.”

Voters should consider the source, he said.

“We do live in an environment where people can post whatever they want to on social media, for example. Doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Brinson Bell agreed.

“We know how to conduct an election,” she said.