Voters may not have to wait quite as long after Election Day as four years ago to know whom the next president will be.
The public needed to wait almost five days in 2020 before most major news outlets could issue a projection, the longest they had to wait since the infamous 2000 election. One main reason was a historic increase in mail-in voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic that several key states weren’t prepared to handle quickly.
But experts say some changes in state policies since then and an expected drop in mail-ins this year should speed the process up, even if the final result isn’t known on election night.
“Things will be different this year,” said Quinn Yeargain, an associate professor of law at Michigan State University. “It may not be as quick as 2022. Famous last words I suppose, but I would be surprised if the process took as long as it did in 2020.”
“At the same time, the ultimate outcome in 2020 was quite clear before the networks called it on that Saturday,” Yeargain added. “There was no real question as to what was going to happen probably after Wednesday afternoon or Thursday.”
Up until 2020, Americans had broadly gotten used to relatively quick race calls for elections, usually no later than late Tuesday or early Wednesday after the election. Of the races of the past few decades, all of them had been called by major media outlets by early the following morning, except for 2000 when a recount in Florida caused weeks of delays.
But four years ago marked a sharp difference, with the pandemic yielding health guidelines to minimize in-person, indoor interactions as much as possible. With the election approaching, many voters turned to mail-in voting to avoid voting in-person, and several states altered their policies to allow more voters to cast their ballots through that method.
That caused a historic amount of mail-in voting, making up more than 43 percent of all votes cast, as opposed to just a quarter of all votes in 2016 and 2018, according to a federal report released after the election evaluating voting methods used in 2020.
But that caused an issue with states being able to process and count all the ballots with the speed that many have gotten used to.
Yeargain said state laws vary, but many did not allow mail-in ballots to be opened or checked for signatures until Election Day.
“The volume was so high that it took a significant amount of time to fully deal with that, which is what opened up the possibility of more conspiracy theories about the election to proliferate,” they said.
Chris Mann, the research director for the Center for Election Innovation & Research, also emphasized the closeness of the race, which made the task for media outlets to call races more difficult.
Biden only carried the key states that clinched him victory by about a percentage point at most, and that could repeat itself with this year’s winner, with polls showing a neck and neck race.
“The process that the news media decision desk could go through is trying to get to a point where the remaining uncounted ballots are not enough to potentially make a difference, and given that the polls show things to be essentially a tie, and if they prove to be correct and these elections are going to be decided by very narrow margins, it will again take quite a while,” Mann said.
But some states have altered their policies for processing ballots ahead of Election Day in ways could speed up the process, reducing the chance for a delay as long as in 2020.
The center, which works with election officials to build trust in elections, released a report this month gathering vote processing policies for all 50 states. Almost all states allow envelopes for mail-in ballots to be processed ahead of Election Day itself, according to the report.
That includes processes such as verifying signatures and other information on the outside of the ballot, sorting envelopes, rejecting improperly filled-out ballots and preparing them for a machine to scan.
“The important part that takes time is that processing to verify every ballot, to make sure that it is valid and completed, has all the information to verify the voters identity,” Mann said.
“Tabulation is the technical term that the election officials use that is separate — much faster, much easier — in that process.”
Time is needed to know if the mail-in ballots this year will resemble the total from 2020, though it may be less now that the pandemic is not dominating daily life. But millions of mail-ins have already been cast, and Republicans appear to be embracing the method more than in the past.
About half of all states also allow machines to scan ballots before Election Day as long as the results aren’t aggregated, the report states.
The current rules for two of the main battlegrounds, Michigan and Nevada, include changes from their policies for the 2020 election, allowing their ballots to be processed in advance. This could be especially critical in Nevada, a state where most voters cast their ballots by mail.
Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina will also allow processing ahead of Election Day, though North Carolina’s may be complicated by the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Georgia in particular seems likely to be quicker among the battlegrounds.
But a quick race call might be impossible if the election is particularly close and comes down to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — both states do not allow envelope processing to start until Election Day.
Mann underscored that the rules for how the process works were set well in advance of the election but are susceptible to misinformation and disinformation affecting how the public views them.
“The same process that’s used in Pennsylvania is used in other states. The same process that’s used in Wisconsin is used in other states,” he said. “The states where the doubt is cast is being passed by people spreading mis- and disinformation about it. The same system isn’t causing doubts in other places because it’s not being attacked, and there isn’t disinformation being spread about it.”
And the closer the race is, the more likely for temperatures to be heightened on both sides around the process, said Pete Seat, an instructor for the University of Arizona’s School of Government and Public Policy and a former George W. Bush White House spokesperson.
“The closer the election is and the longer it takes to find out — particularly if you get into a situation where you’re going to the courts to have the result adjudicated in some way — half the country is going to be displeased,” he said. “It’s just a matter of which half it is.”
Analysts widely expect the race to be close even if one candidate wins most of the key swing states, but just how close and in which states may decide how long the country is holding its breath. Seat argued people should remember to be patient, even as impatience is a “function” of society.
“I know a lot of people who just want the election to be over so we can move on, but we’re going to have to be patient, because it may not be as over as quickly as we want it to be,” he said.
