The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It could take days to find out the midterm election results
Voters planning to stay up late on Election Night to find out which party wins control of the House and Senate should be prepared for a possible marathon wait.
The unusually large number of close contests, many in states known for slow ballot counting, means the first congressional election of Donald Trump’s presidency could go into overtime, perhaps for days after Nov. 6.
State election officials will be contending with potentially narrow margins, absentee and provisional ballots as well as the potential for contested results.
The first results, after polls close in the eastern U.S. beginning as early as 6 p.m. New York time, may give an early indication of whether Democrats managed to generate a so-called wave election that sweeps Republicans out of control in the House and, perhaps, the Senate.
But even a rout is no guarantee of a quick resolution. In 2006, the last wave election, it took two days to determine that Democrats had flipped control of the Senate because of close results in Virginia and Montana.
“In the normal course of any election, there are going to be ballots that take longer to count,” said Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who tracks voting data. “If those are the states where there are particularly close elections, we may be sitting a few days before we know.”
The prospects for ambiguity are higher this year, in part, because of the unusually large number of competitive House races in California, where voting by mail is more popular than in-person balloting. Golden State ballots can be postmarked on Election Day and aren’t due in county election offices until the Friday after the election.
The state, where about a quarter of the ballots cast in 2014 were tallied at least two days after the election, is central to Democratic efforts to try to secure the net gain of 23 seats the party needs to take the House. It has seven races rated as competitive — either tossups or just leaning Democrat or Republican — by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
In that midterm four years ago, it took California officials more than two weeks to confirm a re-election victory for Democratic Rep. Jim Costa. On election night, he trailed Republican challenger Johnny Tacherra, who went to Washington for orientation during the drawn-out tabulation. But Costa ultimately pulled ahead in the full tally that included Democratic-leaning provisional and absentee ballots.
This year’s California primary in June is also instructive. It took 19 days to determine the second-place finisher in the 48th congressional district, in a contest where the first and second place winners — no matter their political party — advanced to the general election. The race, between incumbent Republican Dana Rohrabacher and Democrat Harley Rouda, is among the seven in the state that Cook rates as competitive.
With 435 House and 35 Senate seats on the nation’s ballots, other states could generate counting delays or polling place legal challenges as well.
Washington state, where Cook rates three House races as competitive, conducts all of its voting by mail. Ballots must be postmarked no later than Election Day, or returned to a ballot drop box by 11 p.m. Eastern Time.
Iowa has two House races rated as competitive and makes wide use of absentee ballots. Those votes must be postmarked by the day before the election and received in a county auditor’s office no later than noon on the Monday following the election.
The tabulation of provisional ballots in close contests also could slow the congressional verdict.
States are required under federal law to provide them to anyone with a problem at the polls, including voters who don’t have the required form of identification or those whose names are missing from polling place registration lists.
Election officials review provisional ballots and allow voters to clarify their eligibility after Election Day, and that can be a time-consuming process. Races are often called by the Associated Press and other news organizations even before provisional ballots are counted because the margins of most contests are definitive enough that those additional ballots won’t alter the outcome.
If there are races that are extremely close that haven’t been called on Election Night, McDonald said his research suggests that provisional ballots tend to break strongly for Democrats.
That’s because younger voters, who tend to move more often and lean Democratic, are some of the biggest users of provisional ballots.