MICHIGAN, USA — One of the hallmarks of American elections is that there’s a lot of waiting. The 2020 presidential contest, for example, wasn’t called until four days after the election.
Looking ahead to the 2024 election, voters can likely expect more of the same.
There’s no national body that administers the election. So every state plus the District of Columbia gets to decide how they run their elections, and they all do things a little differently.
As people watch the results on election night, it’s important to understand that these rules can mean different candidates take the lead at different times — and that tabulating final results can take days and even weeks.
Voters can expect to be in suspense in several swing states that will determine who wins the White House.
In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, for instance, mail ballots are not opened until Election Day, which extends the vote-counting process.
Most states with mail voting allow ballots to be opened several days before Election Day and tallied ahead of time. That's why some states with a lot of mail ballots, like Georgia, report their results faster.
Other states that rely heavily on mail can take longer, however.
In Arizona, voters can drop off a mail ballot as late as at the time polls close on Election Day. And a recent law in Nevada allows ballots that are mailed on Election Day and arrive a couple of days later to be counted.
In recent elections, misinformation has spread in places where election officials have taken days to release a complete ballot count. Experts and election officials say state laws are a factor and that time and labor are necessary to process and correctly tabulate ballots.
That's the case here in Michigan.
Michigan is a critical state in November. It holds the possibility of being a deciding factor in the presidential election. That means a lot of eyes will be on the state's election count on November 5.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson answered when you can expect results on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” Sunday.
"I would estimate, end of the day on Wednesday, as the best guess on how we'll perform. But that said, we will always prioritize accuracy and security over efficiency. Understanding how much people will want those results, we're still going to make sure the process is secure and accurate before we put anything out to the public," she said.
A new law gives local elections officials more time to process and tabulate mail ballots, which should help alleviate the logjam that slowed ballot counting in the 2020 presidential election.
Cities and towns with at least 5,000 people may begin processing and tabulating ballots up to eight days before Election Day, while smaller jurisdictions may begin the morning before Election Day.
"We do have more options to process ballots sooner than Election Day, which is where we were restricted in 2020, so I'm optimistic we could see results even sooner," Benson added.
In 2020, more than 3.1 million voters cast their ballots by mail, about 56% of all ballots cast. State law at the time prevented election workers from opening the envelopes and preparing ballots for the count until the night before Election Day. Trump took an early lead in the vote count on election night, but that lead began to erode overnight and early Wednesday morning and Biden took the lead later that afternoon.
The law change may result in a speedier release of mail voting totals and may mitigate the so-called “red mirage” that Trump falsely claimed was evidence of voter fraud in Michigan and in a handful of other key states.
Michigan also has a new voting dashboard that tracks absentee and early voting ballot numbers.
As of Monday, Oct. 21 at 12 p.m., a total of 2,235,804 absentee ballots have been requested and a total of 1,022,763 absentee ballots have been returned.
