WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — The first US polls close at 4am on Wednesday, Pakistan time, and the last at 11am, but readers in Pakistan should not expect to know who controls Congress by breakfast, or perhaps even by the end of the day.
The races that decide the Senate and the House are expected to be close, and close races take longer. David Becker, who runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, says he has doubts that Americans will know who holds either chamber on election night. A slow count is normal, election experts say, and is not a sign of fraud.
What takes the time
California is the biggest reason. It sends a mail ballot to every registered voter and accepts them until a week after the vote, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Each one needs its signature checked, and even those that arrive early are not counted until the polls close. Some California races can take days or weeks to call.
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are slowed by state laws that stop officials from even opening mail ballots until the morning of the vote. Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Utah, Washington and the District of Columbia also send mail ballots to all active voters.
Alaska could take longest of all, and its Senate race is one of the seven toss-ups. It uses ranked-choice voting: if no candidate passes 50% of first choices, the last-placed candidate is eliminated and those votes move to the next choice, round by round. In a 2022 House race there, the result came 15 days after the vote. This year’s race also has two Dan Sullivans on the ballot.
Why the numbers may jump
Mail, early and in-person votes can lean differently, and they are counted at different times, so a lead can appear to swing overnight or days later. “The votes are already in,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice. “They just all aren’t counted at the same time.”
He compares it to watching a recording of a basketball game: a late comeback does not mean points were added after the final whistle.
Winners on the night are not official either. They are projections by news organisations, based on the votes counted so far and those still out, and bigger margins are called faster. Every state then takes weeks to certify its results. Officials never finish counting on election night, said William Gates, a former Maricopa County supervisor in Arizona. “It can’t be done.”
That gap is where experts expect false claims to spread. Becker said candidates who think they are losing are almost certain to spread lies about the count, and that he expects Trump to do so on the night, as he did in 2020. Trump said last week he would accept the results “if they’re honest elections”.
Our live results card counts a seat only when major US news organisations have called it, not on early leads or forecasts.
