Anyone who has watched election returns knows that the media will report both the number of precincts in and the percentages. How do absentee ballots figure into the precinct number? In Maine, all absentee and early ballots go to the Secretary of State’s office, and are counted seperatly from the polling stations. Is this how news stations can sometimes call an election with <1% of precincts reported? In Maine, absentee/early ballots are expected to be around 30% of the total ballots cast.
The votes are tallied to the particular precinct that the person lives in.
I don’t know how Maine operates but in most places absentee ballots are counted after the voting ends, usually the next few days. In close elections there can be a long lag until the final result in known.
News stations rely entirely upon exit polling to make their calls.
Our absentees are sorted by the respective voters’ precincts, separated from the voter sender info and placed into precinct packets that are then held in secure vault. After close of polls on election day the packets are opened and the ballots counted. The result is added on to the precinct’s numbers by the Elections Board.
In Minnesota, the absentee ballots used to be sent out to the correct precinct on election day, and at the end of the day, the poll workers would run those paper ballots through the regular vote scanner.
But now we are having a lot more people vote absentee or early, so those ballots are scanned at the county/city clerks office in advance, and the totals added in with the correct precinct when they are reported at the end of the night. But they show up as a separate count, so you know how many people voted in person vs. voted absentee/early. Just the count of voters, the votes for candidates is just reported as a full total for the precinct, including all ballots…
In Ohio, they’re allowed to be counted during the day on election day, and those results can be reported right at 7:30. Some stragglers will come in after the election (they will be counted so long as they were postmarked by Monday and received within ten days), but most of them have already been returned.
In addition to exit polling, a selection of the precincts can give a good indication of the result. The media outlets will have records of how a particular location voted in recent elections, and can compare those past results to the ones that are coming in.
Right. However, this is not the method used when the results are given immediately after the polls close. Nor is it normally useful if only 1% of the precincts have reported because it’s unlikely that the particular telltale precincts are part of that 1%. Key precinct analysis is helpful later on when a sizable percentage of the returns are known.
Why so many different ways to include absentee ballots in the final count?
Counting ahead of time without announcing the total would still find a way to cheat.
Very strange this un-united way to count the votes.
Because states are in charge of voting, and we have 50 of them.
And many details of the logistics are delegated to the counties. Of which we have about 3200 not counting special territories and districts.
In California our ballots can be mailed in on election day. They count if they arrive within 3 days after election day. So in a very close election it might be 3+ days to get the final tally.
Hillary won by two million votes in California … they could make it 30 days and she still would’ve won that state.
Any hope for the absentee votes to count now in a close election?
I was speaking generally and not to last night’s election.