Not knowing all the results on election night is normal. Here's why.

Former President Donald Trump recently told his supporters that the United States should have a system to know results on election night.

Calling for "quick, fair elections" at an Oct. 19 Pennsylvania rally, Trump said, "We spend all this money on machines, and then they announce, ‘We expect to have the results like seven days after the election.’ If you had paper ballots, you get (results) at 10 p.m." 

Voting machines are not the reason we don’t know election results on election night. Paper ballots also don’t affect the timing. The vast majority of Americans will cast paper ballots during the 2024 election, as they have for nearly two decades. 

Trump spokespeople did not respond to our request for comment. 

The alternative to machine tabulation is hand counts, which pose several logistical challenges. Ballots often have multiple pages including local, state and federal contests. Hand counts could lead to longer timelines for producing election results, which could run afoul of state laws that require official results by a certain date. Research also shows that hand counts can lead to mistakes.

Recent social media posts also spread falsehoods about election results timing:

• Catturd, a conservative X account with 3 million followers, praised Florida’s quick counting in a post that said, "Any Secretary of State in any state who gets on TV today and says it'll take days to count the votes is a cheater, a traitor, and should be arrested."

• A Threads post said, "BREAKING. The cheat has begun. The states of Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania have officially announced that they will not have election results available on Election Night." (We rated that claim False.)

• An Instagram post said, "The only reason to preemptively announce that you refuse to count on election night is if you plan to use the extra days to cheat after learning exactly how many ballots you need."

Taking days to count votes doesn’t signal wrongdoing. State laws dictate when mail ballots must be received and when election officials can start processing and tabulating them. In states with significant numbers of mail ballots or close margins, those laws affect how fast votes can be counted and how quickly media outlets can project a winner.

More than half of all states require that mail ballots be received by Election Day, but about 18 states will count mail ballots if they are received after Election Day but postmarked on or before Election Day. Some state laws allow military or overseas ballots to be received after Election Day. 

States also follow laws about time allowed to verify provisional ballots and to allow voters to "cure" or fix their ballots — if, for example, they forgot to sign the envelope. In states with close margins or a significant number of mail ballots, these laws mean some states take longer to post unofficial results. 

"That is not an indication of any fraud," Virginia Kase Solomón, president of Common Cause, a public advocacy group, said. "All of these processes are safe and secure and handled with a tremendous amount of care."

State law usually defines when local officials must finish counting ballots. This ranges from one week after Election Day in 15 states, including Pennsylvania, to two weeks in 21 states, including the battleground states Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Arizona is among the nine states that allow three weeks, and a few states allow for up to four weeks.

The next step is that states certify results, with deadlines in November and December.

"This variation and complexity of vote counting contributes to confusion that bolsters rumoring and conspiracy theorizing about the integrity of the process," the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington wrote. The center defines "rumoring" as "the collaborative process of generating, evolving, and spreading rumors."

"There are no official results on Election Night — there never have been," Edward B. Foley, an Ohio State University constitutional law professor who specializes in elections, told PolitiFact by email in 2020. "Election Night tallies are always just preliminary, pending certification of the (checking) of returns under state law, which takes time. Every state has a law on this point."

The presidential winner wasn’t known before midnight in 1960, 1968, 1976, 2000, 2004 and 2016, historian Michael Beschloss tweeted before the 2020 election. In 2020, the winner wasn’t known until several days after Election Day. 

We contacted election officials in multiple battleground states to ask about factors that affect the timing of unofficial and official results. Here’s what they told us.

From left, Carol Hamilton, Cristo Carter and Cynthia Huntley prepare ballots Sept. 5, 2024, for mailing to the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections in Charlotte, N.C. (AP)

State law does not permit counties to begin opening mail ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day.

In Philadelphia about one week before Election Day 2024, there were more than 140,000 ballots "sitting in a warehouse waiting to be counted," City Commissioner Seth Bluestein said. 

Pennsylvania Republicans rejected a bill that would have allowed earlier processing of mail ballots, because they wanted it tied to voter ID requirements. By contrast, some states, including Florida, allow mail ballot processing weeks before Election Day.

In 2020, Election Day was Tuesday, Nov. 3, and The Associated Press said Saturday Nov. 7 that Joe Biden won Pennsylvania and therefore the presidency. (News outlets project results based on their own methodologies.)

Al Schmidt, secretary of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, said Oct. 27 on CBS’ "Face the Nation" that 2020 was the first election for which Pennsylvania had large-scale mail ballot voting. Now, election officials have more experience with mail-in voting and have acquired additional equipment that helps to process those ballots and ballot envelopes. The percentage of Pennsylvania voters who will cast a mail ballot this year is expected to be lower than 2020, Schmidt said. In 2020, about 37% voted by mail.

This year, "there are several factors that will, I think, contribute to knowing results earlier, even though the law hasn't changed," Schmidt said. But it has always come down to "how close an election is before you know who won and who lost."

The majority of voters here cast their ballot by mail. 

Election officials begin processing mail ballots upon receipt, and tabulating can begin after processing. The first results are released at 8 p.m. on election night. However, ballots that are submitted at drop boxes on Election Day can be processed only after polls close on Election Day.

"Because we have exceptionally close margins, Arizona calls its races later than other states do," Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer told PBS in August.

The AP, however, called the 2020 race in Arizona before some it called other states, at 2:51 a.m. EST Wednesday, Nov. 4.

Arizona expects to have official results about 10 to 13 days after Election Day, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said Oct. 27 on CBS’ "Face the Nation." 

Similar to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin election workers can begin processing mail ballots once polls open on Election Day.

"I anticipate that we will not be done until after midnight," Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutiérrez told a PolitiFact partner, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 

The AP called the 2020 race in Wisconsin at 2:16 p.m. EST  Wednesday, Nov. 4. .

Under a 2024 law, counties must report the results of early and absentee votes by 8 p.m. Election Day. By 10 p.m., counties must report how many uncounted ballots remain. That could accelerate results, but the secretary of state’s office is not predicting when the unofficial count will be complete.

Local election officials are allowed to start processing mail ballots — which includes opening envelopes and stacking ballots to prepare them for counting — Oct. 21. 

In 2020, the AP race call in Georgia was at 7:58 p.m. EST on Thursday, Nov. 19.

In 2020, Michigan’s unofficial results were completed Wednesday night, Nov. 4, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Oct. 20 on CBS’ "Face the Nation." The AP called the 2020 race at 5:58 p.m EST.

A 2023 state law means that election officials can begin processing mail ballots earlier, which Benson said makes her "optimistic we could see results even sooner." Cities with populations of at least 5,000 can process and tabulate mail ballots starting eight days before Election Day.

Benson predicted that this year’s unofficial results could be available by end of day Wednesday, Nov. 6.

The majority of voters in the SIlver State cast their ballots by mail.

Nevada counties can begin processing mail ballots 15 days before Election Day. At 8 a.m.  Election Day, counties can begin tabulating early voting returns and mail ballot returns received before Election Day.

Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, typically has a large volume of mail ballots arriving on or after Election Day. Those are tabulated the day after Election Day.

The AP called the 2020 race in Nevada at 12:13 p.m. EST on Saturday, Nov. 7.

State law allows mail ballot processing to start Oct. 1, but most people vote in person.

In 2020, the AP didn’t call the North Carolina race until 3:49 p.m. EST on Friday, Nov. 13. But in 2020, the courts allowed the receipt of mail-in ballots nine days after the election. This year, the deadline for mail-in ballots is 7:30 p.m. EST on Nov. 5.

The state elections board expects that 98%+ of ballots will be counted on election night. That means it’s likely we will know who won the state on election night based on unofficial results unless the race is extremely close or there are enough provisional ballots that could determine the winner.

Hurricane Helene, which devastated western North Carolina in late September, has prompted some changes in voting sites and rules, but the changes are not expected to affect the timing of statewide results. The Legislature ordered more early voting sites in two western North Carolina counties. 

RELATED: North Carolina’s post-Helene changes for absentee, in-person voting are not signs of ‘cheating’

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