I was looking up British general elections today, and I found out polls close on election day at 10pm. That surprised me since most American states close their polls at 8pm local time. Why do American polls close so early? And what times do polls close in other countries?
It’s actually worse than that because there IS no nationwide poll closing time. Individual states all decide how long the polls are open for themselves. Some close at 7PM, some close at 8PM, some close later.
In Australia polls close at 6pm, but the elections are always held on a Saturday, so there’s not so much of an issue with people having to vote after work.
Well, some people do work on Saturdays, but they can always get a pre-poll or postal vote.
In South Africa the polling stations open at 7am and close at 9pm, but the voting continues for anyone who was in the queue before 9pm. Election day is a public holiday.
In Canada, polls close at an earlier local time on the West Coast than they do on the East Coast. See here. The net result is that most of the polls (i.e., those in the Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones) close within a half-hour of each other. However, the polls in Atlantic Canada (representing about one-ninth of the seats in Parliament) are closed 2–2.5 hours before any other polls close.
My interest is not so much with when the polls close for the whole country, but the different times that the polls close within the country. Many Hawaiians often feel that their vote (for national elections) doesn’t count because the rest of the USA is done voting so long ahead of them. I’d imagine that a similar situation could exist in Russia, but it probably doesn’t, because the population centers there are in the westernmost parts of the country.
The short answer is, the logistics of elections have always been considered a local (ie, state-level) issue.
Their votes count to the extent that they would be the deciding state if it came down to that close a race. The real reason their votes “don’t count” is that Hawaii is a firmly Democratic state and can pretty much be called before a vote is cast.
That feeling was fairly strong in western Canada in the 70s, when the Liberal Party had a stranglehold on Quebec (federally) and strong support in Ontario. By the time polls closed in western Canada, before a vote was counted, the networks were usually predicting a majority government, regardless of the votes in western Canada. The problem was aggravated by the law which said that election results could not be broadcast in an area until the polls closed, so literally the first thing westerners heard when the election coverage started in their province was that a majority government had been elected.
That’s the reason for the staggering of the closing times mentioned in MikeS’s post - to try and ensure that polls close at roughly the same time in most of the country.
However, the issue has receded for another reason: the Liberal party has lost its monolithic hold on central Canada, and the Conservative Party has made in-roads there. Since the Conservatives draw a lot of there support from western Canada, the situation is now more fluid, and the perception that westerns’ votes don’t count is not nearly as strong, since the election now often isn’t decided until western results are counted.
Some close as late as 11pm, and in Alaska they’re open until 1am.
25 states close at 8pm or earlier. That seems early to me, but then, I’m not the one who has to spend hours tabulating the results.
No. Polls in Alaska close at 8:00 local time. You’re reading off of a list that translates closing times into Eastern Standard Time.
Except in unusual situations involving apparatus malfunction and court intervention, no American state keeps its polls open past 9:00 local time. The vast majority close at 7 or 8.
I like when they close in Oregon … they don’t, because they don’t have them (except for a few in county elections offices for hidebound traditionalists or people with special needs) … they went to a vote by mail process. I’ve been on the “permanent vote by mail” list in CA for some time, and I don’t miss going to the polls.
:smack: You are correct. Sorry.
In Dixville Notch, NH, they close at 12:01 AM and are announced immediately. Polls in Quebec close at 9 and I have seen no long lines. Lots of people vote in advanced polls.
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In Dixville Notch, NH, they close at 12:01 AM and are announced immediately.
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Only if all the voters have voted by that time.
I served as a poll official in Hawaii during one presidential election. IIRC, we closed at 6pm. It fell to me to be the one to call the central headquarters and tell them to send someone to pick up the ballots. When I called, they said, “Okay. Say, do you want to know who won?” The election had already been called.
IIRC, polls in Florida close an hour later in the western panhandle than in the rest of the state, because it’s in a different timezone. This was raised as an issue in 2000, when Republicans were concerned that the media calling the state for Gore before the polls closed in the (predominantly Republican) panhandle depressed late turnout there.
In Texas’ Travis County, you can vote VERY early. In fact, I almost never vote on Election Day- you can usually vote at a supermarket or mall for weeks before the actual election.
And the result has been a HUGE upturn in voter turnout, right? Wrong! Turnout is still pitiful.
But for those of us who DO vote, it’s delightfully convenient.