GREENSBORO, N.C. — Every day, new polls and projections show this candidate or that candidate winning. Pollsters ask voters or potential voters in person or via phone who they have voted for or will vote for. But you're trusting what they're saying. No one was in the ballot box with them and no ballots have been processed.
Let's be clear, no absentee ballots have been processed and no early voting ballots have been tabulated. None of it happens until Election Day. On that day, all the absentee ballots that are in will start to be read. What does that mean?
Each absentee ballot comes in a big envelope. By hand, each envelope has to be opened, and the inside envelope has to be taken out. Then an elections worker looks for the photo ID and that the information has been filled out before opening the envelope to get the ballot out and put the ballot into the voting machine.
"We will publish the results of the absentee by-mail voting and shortly after that we will have all the voting equipment from early voting sites and we will tabulate all the results from that," said Charlie Collicutt, Guilford County Board of Elections Director.
The polls close on Election Day at 7:30 pm. If you're in line at that time, you get to vote. Once everyone is through, the precinct closes and the ballots and tabulation machines are physically driven over to the county board of elections office and the counting begins.
That goes on all night. But even if there is a clear winner, the election isn't official.
"It's 10 days after the election, the Canvass period, auditing and conducting recounts if we need to and investigating things that may have come up. We're looking at provisional ballots about registration or with photo ID but we are auditing and auditing and the final certification of the election," said Collicutt.
Election Day is Tuesday, November 5, 2024. The final certification of the election is 10 days later on November 15.
