Some states have taken days to produce election results, while others report their results almost immediately. Variables that affect the timeliness of each state include race margins, how many mail-in ballots come in on or after Election Day, and whether a state has canvassed, or counted, pre-Election Day ballots ahead of time.

Concerns with this process begin to arise when a battleground state appears to be counting votes at a slower pace on election night or is accepting swathes of ballots after polls close. Suspicions arose in 2020, for example, after former President Donald Trump leveled vague allegations that bad actors were attempting to tamper with results in the hours and days after polls closed.

Hans von Spakovsky, a lawyer who works on election reform for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that states that take a long time to count ballots naturally diminish confidence in elections.

“The longer it takes them to come up with the results, the more people are going to be questioning and losing confidence in the integrity of the results,” von Spakovsky told the Washington Examiner. “They’re going to be asking, ‘Why is it taking so long? Where are all these additional ballots coming from?’ That’s the kind of thing that is not good for maintaining confidence in the election process.”

Here is what voters should know about the ballot counting process.

What is precanvassing?

One driving factor behind states reporting results quickly is precanvassing, or the process of counting pre-Election Day ballots before the election.

The vast majority of states have a precanvassing process in place, which results in less work and, potentially, faster results when polls close. However, precanvassing does nothing to address the dumps of mail-in ballots that come in on or after Election Day.

Pennsylvania and Wisconsin do not precanvass ballots. Other swing states, including Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina, do count ballots in advance.

How do some states, such as Florida, report election results so quickly?

Media outlets will call the presidential races in several solid blue states, such as California, and solid red states, such as Wyoming, almost immediately after polls close because the wide margins in those races will shine through the moment election officials start counting votes.

Florida, a state that leans red but can be competitive, has attracted praise for wrapping up its vote count quickly on election night despite the margins in the presidential races being narrower.

Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, a Republican, touted his state’s canvassing process in an interview with the Washington Examiner last month, saying Florida counts all of its pre-Election Day votes it receives before Election Day.

“So on Election Day all we’re counting is Election Day votes and those vote-by-mail ballots that come in on Election Day,” Byrd said

“That’s where it’s taking them days or weeks to count. It’s why we, as the third-largest state, can have it out by 10 o’clock at night, because there’s no excuse,” Byrd said. “There is no exception. If that ballot isn’t in, it ain’t getting counted.”

Why do down-ballot votes in California take weeks to count?

There are multiple factors that play into California’s notoriously slow tabulation of ballots in close congressional races.

Most ballots in California are cast by mail, which creates more work for election officials who must process each mail-in ballot. In 2020, more than 80% of the state’s ballots were cast by mail.

California also accepts ballots postmarked by Election Day up to seven days after the election.

The prevalence of mail-in voting is coupled with the fact that certain congressional districts in California are uniquely competitive, according to the Center for Election Innovation and Research executive director David Becker.

“Even if they counted them fast, some of those districts are going to come down to a handful of votes,” said Becker, who once served as a counsel to the state’s redistricting commission.

The Cook Political Report shows California has five toss-up races this year, more than any other state.

Will Arizona see drama again in 2024?

Arizona was one of the closest presidential races in the country in 2020, and its results were plagued by controversy after Fox News was among a few major media outlets to call the race for President Joe Biden on election night, while several other media networks declined to call it for more than a week.

Arizona election officials count votes from pre-Election Day ballots before the election, but they do not tabulate sums of the vote counts until polls close.

Arizona GOP Chairwoman Gina Swoboda explained that despite the state’s precanvassing efforts, the results could be unknown for days after the election if the state’s most populous county, Maricopa, sees hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots dropped off on Election Day.

She predicted that this would not be the case based on the returns, however. State data shows about two million people have cast ballots in Arizona so far.

“If Maricopa has got 65% of their vote reported [on election night] and the margin’s as big as I think it is right now and the momentum continues to be where I think it is up to Election Day … I think the media is going to be able to call Arizona on election night,” Swoboda told the Washington Examiner. “It might be 1 or 2 in the morning on election night, but I think they’ll call it”

Will the Nevada Supreme Court ruling this week affect ballot counting?

Nevada, another 2024 swing state, accepts mail-in ballots until the Saturday after polls close, so long as those ballots are postmarked by Election Day.

Nevada is another state that begins scanning ballots that arrive before Election Day so the state will have a head start on the counting of these mail-in ballots.

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The Nevada Supreme Court ruled on Monday that mail-in ballots without decipherable postmarks will be accepted for up to three days after the election, which could result in more mail-in ballots requiring counting after Election Day.

Republicans excoriated the ruling, saying it undermined election integrity. Democrats in the lawsuit pointed to the fact that in the Nevada primary, only a couple dozen mail-in ballots had missing postmark dates.