Aug. 23, 2022, 6:10 p.m. ETAug. 23, 2022, 6:10 p.m. ET
Neil Vigdor
Election officials counting ballots at the office of the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections on Tuesday afternoon in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Florida and New York are on the clock: A series of primaries on Tuesday, some fiercely competitive, are posing the latest test of each state’s efficiency at counting votes and reporting timely results.
New York is holding its first primaries since it streamlined its process for counting mail-in ballots, which election experts say should reduce delays. And Florida makes few exceptions for accepting absentee ballots after in-person voting ends, so relatively few votes will remain uncounted after polls close.
But close races could upend the timely reporting of results, those experts cautioned.
In Florida, most of the polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern time, but voting ends an hour later for parts of the Panhandle in the Central time zone.
A half-hour after the polls close, election supervisors in the 67 counties are required to report to the state early voting and vote-by-mail results that they have received by that point, said Mark Ard, a spokesman for the Florida Department of State.
The first results should appear on the state’s election website shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern time, with counties required to release updates every 45 minutes until they have completed their counts, he said.
Absentee ballots must be received by the counties by 7 p.m. local time, except for those from military and overseas voters. The number of uncounted ballots after Election Day should be relatively small, according to Mr. Ard, who said the state would track those totals.
About 98 percent of the vote in Florida is typically counted on Election Day, said Stephen Ohlemacher, election decision editor for The Associated Press.
In the 2020 general election, 100 percent of Florida’s precincts had reported election results as of 1:02 a.m. Eastern time the morning after the election, according to The A.P.
In New York, in-person voting ends statewide at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Under a new state law, counties must start processing mail-in ballots within four days of receiving them and may begin tabulating those results an hour before the polls close, Mr. Ohlemacher noted. In the past, he said, the counting of mail-in ballots did not start until a week after the election.
The change already had a major effect during the June 28 primaries in New York, which hosted intraparty contests for governor and the State Assembly, the lower chamber of the Legislature. Just 1 percent of the vote remained uncounted after Election Day. In the 2020 general election, it was 23 percent, according to The A.P.
But New York continues to lag behind other states in providing information about the number of mail-in ballots cast, Mr. Ohlemacher said, adding that this could delay The A.P. from determining who wins close races.
Counties will start to post results in real time on the state’s election results website around 10 p.m. Eastern time, said Jennifer Wilson, a spokeswoman for the New York State Board of Elections.
Source: nytimes.com
