Extensive coverage of federal, state and local elections by the ABC. “We should never see a ‘100% of precincts reporting’ language again when there are thousands of absentee ballots yet to count and include in the totals,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California-Irvine. Processing mail-in ballots takes longer than processing in-person ballots, and many more voters plan to vote by mail than in previous years. According to the University of Florida's U.S. Donald Trump's more sedate debate performance on Thursday night was a departure in tone from his chaotic performance weeks ago, but the President continued to cast his warped view of … But in an election conducted heavily by mail, the “precincts reporting” percentage is almost meaningless. But some election officials have said that isn’t enough time. The metric has long been used in TV chyrons and online databases to indicate how much of the vote has been counted. But counting the final six percent of votes took more than 10 days. With all of these factors at play, ballots received after Election Day could certainly have a sizable impact on election results. They reported their results in an average of 6.4 days. Early leads for one candidate can be hijacked by partisan commentators and then amplified on social media. Voters can help streamline the ballot-counting process by not waiting until the last minute to mail in their ballots, said Matthew Weil, director of the elections project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. For each primary, we tracked how many votes Edison had released every hour for two weeks after the election. According to the Federal Election Commission, states have until December 8 to report results. New York processed 94 percent of its votes within a few hours of polls closing. These three battleground states — crucial for figuring out who wins the presidency — were among the slowest to release nearly complete results. These two trends — more absentee voting, not much time to prepare for it — could lead to some snail’s-paced race calls in November. While Michigan, a swing state, changed its rules just this month to allow election officials to begin processing absentee ballots the day before Election Day, per NPR, others have not. Rick Klein, the political director at ABC News, said he is making these concerns a priority for his network’s election night coverage: “That’s a hard thing to explain to an audience. The last votes trickled in a day later. Get the latest in election news, live updates, debates, candidates, issues, polls, analysis, and results. Most Americans want to vote before Election Day, a significant shift from previous years, poll finds. Consider this year’s California primary, in which 5.8 million people voted for president. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said she wants state lawmakers to change the law to allow officials to open ballots three weeks before Election Day. Seek out political coverage that takes pains to explain the ballot-counting process to voters. In Washington, voter irritation with long ballot counts has eased over time, said Russ Walker, the former assistant news director and online managing editor for KING-TV in Seattle. The main reason that there's a very good chance we won't know the winner of the presidential election on Nov. 3 is that almost one-third of the United States merely require mail-in ballots to be postmarked, rather than received, by Election Day, and a handful more require postmarks from just one day prior to Election Day. These shifts are natural and aren’t “nefarious,”  experts agree. “It can be frustrating to wait, and I know partisan activists nationally may try to capitalize on shifting ballot results to raise suspicion about the process. The percentage of precincts counted may be close to 100% yet not take into account a large number of untallied mail ballots. “It could easily be ‘election week’ rather than election day,” said John Lapinski, the director of elections at NBC News. The election is in 10 days. Five of those states heavily used vote-by-mail, as they had in previous elections. There may be lessons in the experiences of states that have become more accustomed to high levels of mail balloting and its resulting delays, such as Oregon and Washington state. It's been almost 70 years since the first time Americans watched election results being tallied in real time on CBS, and ever since, we've expected to know who the next president will be within a few hours of the polls closing on Election Day. A similar request for November is before the same judge. So, while the major news networks will likely carry on the tradition of live-tracking poll returns all night long, don't be surprised when they don't have a solid projection by the wee hours of Nov. 4. It’s time to let go of old ideas about how election night will work. Be patient on election night 2020. Election experts say that everyone — the candidates, the media, and voters watching the results roll in — needs to prepare for the possibility of delayed returns. But high-profile down-ballot races were affected. Reliable media outlets will also make clear that slow counts or shifts in leads are not a sign of fraud or failed processes, and they will debunk viral misinformation, especially if it’s amplified by political figures. Elections Project, with two weeks to go until Election Day, more than 35 million Americans have already cast their ballots via mail-in or early voting, with Democrats more than doubling Republicans. In the June 23 Democratic Senate primary to challenge Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), counties were advised to not release results until June 30. Using the old metric could be highly misleading. A PDF version of Fairfax County's results will be made available after each election; only Fairfax County results are … With all of this in mind, the election will probably seem to be swinging back and forth between the two candidates for quite some time before a winner is announced—first leaning toward Biden with early voting numbers, then toward Trump with the first in-person numbers, before going absolutely haywire as in-person polls close and mailed votes are officially tabulated. “Political leaders should come together and speak out against candidates or groups who declare victory early or raise false claims about ballot tampering,” the report urged. If poll workers can't start processing them as they flood in, there will inevitably be a huge backlog of mailed ballots that will take several days after Nov. 3 to tally. That part is keeping me up at night.”. once absentee ballots are finally allowed to be counted across the U.S. Let’s start with New Hampshire, which held the nation’s first primary. This could lead to delays in declaring a winner in battleground states in the presidential race, possibly making “election night” more like “election week.”. What's at Stake for Abortion in the 2020 Election, Just 25 Celebrities Doing Their Civic Duty, Kristen Welker Is Moderating the Third Debate, The Swing States We Need to Pay Attention to Now, Your Guide to the 2020 Presidential Debates, Where Kamala Harris Stands on the Critical Issues. Here's everything you need to know about voting by mail, in person, early or absentee. Counting the returns will take time. Those states include the battleground state of North Carolina, as well as California and Texas. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, many states are urging residents to vote by mail, and election officials are bracing for a more time-consuming ballot-counting process. Ballots cast by mail require extra steps to verify a voter’s identity, such as comparing signatures, and require more mundane handling like opening envelopes and sorting. He covers national politics and public policy using data and visuals. Welker moderated the debate with a firm hand, and yet a light touch. Not every state had such a dramatic delay, and gradual counting only matters when a race is close. Beware of political spinning. If you hope to settle in to watch the Nov. 3 results, you may want to make other plans. For simplicity, this article considers a state to have reported “nearly complete results” when more than 99 percent of the preliminary vote count was reported by Edison.