Overview
- Election officials continued counting after Tuesday's Election Day as slower jurisdictions such as Maine, Alaska and California processed large volumes of mail ballots and completed state-specific procedures.
- Mail-in ballots must be removed from envelopes, checked for signatures and sometimes 'cured' if information is missing, steps that election officials say lengthen tabulation compared with in-person voting.
- A June 29 U.S. Supreme Court ruling letting states count ballots received after Election Day if postmarked on time preserved late‑arrival rules in many states and raised the number of ballots that can be counted after polls close.
- Mechanisms that add rounds of counting—notably ranked-choice voting in Maine and Alaska—plus automatic recount rules in close races mean some contests may take days or weeks to certify.
- News organizations are projecting winners from unofficial tallies, but officials must complete local canvasses and staggered state certification deadlines—some into December, with Arkansas's deadline on Dec. 18—before results are official.