In the 2020 election, President Joe Biden was not declared the winner of Nevada’s electoral votes until four days after Election Day.
Is it possible we’ll have to wait that long again?
The short answer is yes. Nevada law allows all mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted until 5 p.m. on Saturday, and mail ballots with an unclear or no postmark must be counted by Friday at 5 p.m. Those statutes were upheld this year despite multiple lawsuits from state and national Republicans.
As a result, in the event of a razor-thin margin like in 2020 (Biden won by about 33,000 votes out of 1.4 million ballots cast), election forecasters may not be comfortable calling the race until days after Election Day because of the possibility of outstanding mail ballots. In the 2022 midterms, about 6 percent of Clark County votes and 3 percent of Washoe County votes were received after Election Day. The highest number of mail votes were received the day after Election Day, but there was a steep dropoff the next day, according to the secretary of state’s office.
On the other hand, the unique circumstances of this year’s election and changes in the state’s counting rules could mean the public has a clearer sense of the state of the race earlier on Election Day.
Ahead of this year’s June primary, the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office released new guidance that allowed county election officials to begin counting in-person early votes at 8 a.m. on Election Day. Counties must also report their first batch of results by 6 p.m. on Election Day for verification and quality assurance. People with access to the vote counts before all polls close and results are released must sign a form agreeing to not disclose them, and could face felony charges if that agreement is violated.
State law on that point is the same as it was in 2020, but without explicit guidance to count ballots early on Election Day, county election officials likely counted early votes much later in the day that year, according to the secretary of state’s office.
County officials have also been allowed to start counting mail ballots on Oct. 21, 15 days before Election Day, as was the case in 2020.
This means that, if all goes to plan, the first batch of results publicly posted online on election night should include all of the early in-person votes and mail ballots received before Election Day, according to the secretary of state’s office.
In this year’s election, that will likely make up a large majority of the votes, as more than 1 million early and mail votes had been cast as of Sunday. Republicans have encouraged their supporters to use early and mail voting after falsely claiming in 2020 that those two methods would be rife with fraud. Republican voters have heeded leadership’s call — leading registered Democrats by more than 40,000 votes cast as of Sunday — and will likely be turning out in-person on Election Day at much lower rates than four years ago because so many have already cast their ballots.
Nevada law also stipulates that no results can be released until the final person voting in-person on Election Day has voted. Polls close at 7 p.m. local time, but people who are in line by that time are allowed to vote.
In the June primaries, the polls officially closed at 7:54 p.m., and the first results were posted 10 minutes later, though turnout is going to be much higher in the November elections, which create more lines that keep the polling places open longer.
However, onlookers should exercise caution when looking at the initial numbers because it is unknown how many mail ballots may be outstanding.
