NORTH CAROLINA, USA — States have different laws across the board when it comes to when they can start counting ballots, and delayed official results is something that happens during every election.
In North Carolina, absentee ballots can be mailed in and eligible for a counted vote if they're received by the board of elections by Nov. 12 with a postmark on or before Nov. 3.
"Absentee ballots have been part of the different ways that people might vote for a long time," High Point University Professor Dr. Martin Kifer said.
North Carolina was able to begin processing those ballots before Election Day, but not count and upload the results to the website until polls closed on Tuesday. Kifer said that helped streamline the process of getting results faster.
Kifer said lags like this are common during elections, but this year there are more people voting, and more absentee ballot requests.
"We have a big focus on North Carolina and some of those other states because we still have ballots to count," said Kifer.
In states like Pennsylvania, the board of elections couldn't process absentee ballots before election day like North Carolina could, so that's part of the reason the state is still counting, according to Kifer.
"There’s a good chunk of leeway for states to decide how they are going to deal with absentee ballots or early voting and when they actually count those ballots," Kifer said, "It doesn’t make the ballots any less valid but it does mean that there’s a lag in terms of states actually being able to process votes."
In Nevada, all registered voters were sent an absentee ballot in the mail this year, according to the secretary of state's website. Registered voters did not have to request it, but they could still choose to vote early or in-person on Election Day.
"One reason people might feel anxious about the absentee ballots and how they’re being counted and validity and reliability of the ballots could have to do with how intense the campaign was itself," said Kifer, "We had more people vote in this presidential election than have voted in terms of percentage since 1900."
Close race margins and thousands of outstanding absentee ballots in the key states of Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Georgia is what's keeping races from being called.