Election return reporting

After the polls close, election administrators face the challenging task of accumulating, verifying, and reporting election results. Reporting election returns, often called “election night reporting,” even though the process frequently continues beyond election night, was a major story of the 2020 presidential election and remains a notable topic of interest for voters and researchers. The lack of instantaneous reporting of election returns can create patterns that may appear suspicious to those who are not fully aware of the process, so it is important to understand how election officials tabulate and report results. This process may not be completed on Election Night because the speed at which votes are counted varies by mode (e.g., early, mail, in-person) and jurisdiction, and reporting results later does not necessarily mean something has gone wrong.

This explainer was last updated on August 14, 2026.

The Process, Explained

After voters have cast their ballots, election return reporting involves five steps:

Tabulation of cast ballots
Accumulation and reporting of results to the local election office
Reporting of results to the state
Reporting unofficial results by election offices and media organizations
Canvassing and certification

A blue infographic with outlined cartoon icons indicating the five steps in the process of reporting election returns

Tabulating Votes

Once voters have marked their ballots, they are counted, or tabulated. Where ballots are tabulated depends on local choices and the technology used by voters. (See our voting technology explainer for information about ballot tabulation technology.) A small share of ballots are still handled by hand, but for the most part they are tabulated using electronic tabulators and scanners.

Most commonly, jurisdictions use optical scanners to count paper ballots that are marked either by hand or produced by ballot-marking devices (BMDs). In BMD systems, voters make their selections on a computer screen, and the device prints a paper ballot that is then scanned.

Much of the scanning of paper ballots occurs in the precincts where ballots are marked and deposited, but many jurisdictions also count ballots centrally by the local election office, especially mail ballots. In some cases, ballots marked at polling stations are transported to a central location to be tabulated by high-speed scanners.

When ballots are tabulated using electronic systems, software counts the votes and records the results on designated election-reporting systems and/or on removable election media (e.g, encrypted USB drives). Many systems also generate paper records, such as results tapes or other printed outputs. In many precinct-count jurisdictions, a results tape may be posted or made publicly visible shortly after the polls close.

Accumulating Votes Locally

Once votes have been tabulated, they must be aggregated at the local level. If paper ballots, results tapes, or removable election media need to be transported to a more secure location, they are typically secured in containers with tamper-evident seals and chain-of-custody documentation. Except for the small number of places that still count ballots by hand, election workers use computerized equipment to tally the number of ballots. Removable election media from tabulators or voting machines are read by designated computers, and the results are imported into the jurisdiction’s election management system (EMS) or results-reporting system.

The EMS is software used to define the election, program ballots and tabulators, accumulate vote totals, and generate reports. It tracks the number of votes received by each candidate or ballot option by precinct, voting method, or reporting unit, depending on the jurisdiction’s configuration. The results are backed up frequently throughout the reporting so that the data can be quickly recovered and restored if something goes wrong.

Reporting Votes to the State

Except for purely local elections, local election jurisdictions are responsible for reporting their election results to the state according to state law and administrative procedures. This can happen by paper, mail, courier, or secure electronic transmission, or entry into a state reporting system.

Reporting the Results to the Public

Election returns are reported to the public at various points in the process. In many precinct-count jurisdictions, a results tape may be printed and posted at the polling place or otherwise made available for public inspection before or around the time results are transmitted to the central election office. Some voters learn of election results when the precinct returns are reported to the local election office; the election office then distributes those results to the public, primarily by posting them online. Rather than learning of election results directly from this online posting, the general public typically receives these election reports via the media. When the local jurisdiction reports its initial unofficial election returns to the state, the state elections department then makes those returns available to the public, typically also using the Internet and redistribution by the media.

Media organizations obtain unofficial returns from several sources, including direct feeds from state and local offices, paper-based reports from state and local offices, and aggregators such as the Associated Press and Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ). These vote-return data are distinct from voter surveys, such as exit polls or voter polls, which help media organizations analyze who voted and why but do not themselves constitute election returns.

Canvassing and Certifying Results

The initial election returns reported to the public are unofficial. They are reported to provide transparency to the process and to prepare everyone, from voters to candidates, for what comes next. Although initial vote tabulation is generally accurate, it is incomplete and subject to later verification. To ensure its accuracy, local election authorities have a process, called canvassing, which is described by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission as

[accounting] for every ballot cast and to ensur[ing] that each valid vote is included in the official results. For an election official, the canvass means aggregating or confirming every valid ballot cast and counted—absentee, early voting, Election Day, provisional, challenged, and uniformed and overseas citizen. The canvass enables an election official to resolve discrepancies, correct errors, and take any remedial actions necessary to ensure completeness and accuracy before certifying the election.

Typically, a group of election officials serves as the canvassing board. This board formally reviews all the records produced in the election. They will usually check, for instance, that the number of ballots provided to or issued at a precinct can be reconciled with the number cast, spoiled, unused, provisional, surrendered, or otherwise accounted for under state procedures.

If the two sides of this equation do not balance, the board investigates the discrepancy and makes the necessary corrections.

The election canvass can be thought of as the equivalent of balancing a checkbook. Checkbooks are balanced by checking that all the additions and subtractions in the checkbook are consistent with the bank’s records. If not, then the reason is investigated and corrected. The same is true for the canvass. If the number of ballots provided or issued can be reconciled with the number cast, unused, spoiled, surrendered, provisional, and otherwise accounted for, the board can be certain of the result.

Figure 1. Vote total revisions over time in Virginia during the 2020 presidential election. The y-axis shows the total number of changes made to a precinct’s vote total, and this total is partitioned by the various reasons given for the change.

Figure 1. Vote total revisions over time in Virginia during the 2020 presidential election. The y-axis shows the total number of changes made to a precinct’s vote total, and this total is partitioned by the various reasons given for the change.

Because the canvass almost always finds and resolves discrepancies along the way, the election night results first reported will be updated to reflect the most accurate information. An interesting window into the canvassing process is provided by the Virginia Board of Elections, which maintains a website with an Election Changes log documenting changes to reported vote totals that occur after election night. Using their Election Changes log, the public can observe how many changes were made to a precinct's vote total and the reason for each one.

Once the canvassing board is satisfied that all ballots have been accounted for and properly counted, they certify the results, which makes them official. Those certified results are then communicated to the state, where an analogous canvassing board meets to certify the results for the entire state. If the state board identifies a problem with local results, it may require the locality to correct or clarify its certification. State canvassing boards generally do not redo the full local canvass themselves.

Reporting Speed

It takes time to count all the ballots. In 2020, there was concern that the growth of absentee voting would slow down the vote count. Analysis of real-time reports (provided by the National Election Pool and certain state ENR websites) reveals that states reported their votes at different rates and that policies related to absentee voting had an important influence on that speed. Figure 2 shows how quickly all the states reported their votes in 2020.

Chart showing how quickly all the states reported their votes in 2020. — Figure 2. Percentage of votes counted, by hour, relative to each state’s final poll-closing time in the 2020 presidential election
Data source: National Election Pool via the New York Times.

Figure 2. Percentage of votes counted, by hour, relative to each state’s final poll-closing time in the 2020 presidential election

Data source: National Election Pool via the New York Times.

The solid line shows the percentage of the eventual nationwide popular vote that had been reported each hour. For instance, one hour after polls closed in all the states, 35 percent of all votes had been counted; an hour later, that had risen to 50 percent. The circles show the percentages for each state, with the size of the circles proportional to the total popular votes eventually reported. In the first hour, Florida, Oregon, and Washington had reported over 80 percent of all their votes, whereas six states (Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Maryland, and Nevada) and D.C. had reported none. At the twenty-four-hour mark, 90 percent of the national popular vote had been counted; 35 states had reported at least 90 percent of their vote, with only one (Alaska) reporting less than half. It took three weeks for 99 percent of the nation’s popular vote to be counted, at which point 29 states had completed their count, and only Kansas (97 percent) and New York (83 percent) were at less than 99 percent.

Policies related to absentee ballots were an important factor in how quickly states reported their election results in the first few days after the election. States tended to report more slowly when they had large numbers of mail ballots, restricted preprocessing before Election Day, or allowed timely postmarked ballots to arrive after Election Day.

Figure 3. Proportion of votes counted after polls closed in 2020 and 2024

Figure 3 was taken from Sina Shaikh and Charles Stewart III, “Why the Wait? Preprocessing, Mail Ballot Usage, and Vote Reporting Dynamics in the 2020 and 2024 Elections” working paper, 2026.

Figure 3 suggests that vote reporting proceeded somewhat faster nationwide in 2024 than in 2020.

The Blue Shift

In addition to reporting speed, another issue related to vote tabulation is the partisan trends in the total as vote-counting proceeds. Edward Foley has documented what he called the “blue shift”: since the early 2000s, later-counted votes in presidential elections have tended, on average, to favor Democratic candidates. This blue shift pattern is such that once most of the votes are counted in the first 24 hours after polls have closed, the remaining votes have often leaned Democratic, sometimes strongly, so vote totals can continue to shift perceptibly over the remaining days and weeks. Furthermore, later research by Foley and Charles Stewart III documented that the blue shift was not universal: while most states’ returns exhibit a “blue shift,” many exhibit the opposite, a “red shift.”

This pattern occurs for two major reasons. The first is that Republican-leaning counties are often smaller and more rural, while Democratic-leaning jurisdictions are often larger and more urban. Smaller jurisdictions can often complete their count sooner, so later-reporting jurisdictions may be more Democratic on average. The second is that some voting methods that take longer to count have often been used disproportionately by Democratic-leaning voters.

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