Indy explains: When will we know Nevada’s election results?

In the 2020 election, President Joe Biden was declared the winner of Nevada’s electoral votes just four days after Election Day.

Is it possible that we will have to wait that long again?

The short answer is yes. Nevada law allows all mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted until 5 p.m. Saturday, and mail ballots with an unclear or no postmark must be counted no later than Friday at 5 p.m. These statutes were notwithstanding this year several lawsuits of state and national Republicans.

As a result, in the event of a razor-thin margin like in 2020 (Biden won by about 33,000 votes out of 1.4 million cast), election forecasters may not feel comfortable calling the race until days after Election Day due to the possibility of outstanding mail-in ballots. During the 2022 midterm elections, approximately 6 percent of votes were received in Clark County and 3 percent of votes were received in Washoe County after Election Day. The highest number of mail-in votes were received the day after Election Day, but there was a steep decline the next day, the report said. office of the State Secretary.

On the other hand, the unique circumstances of this year’s election and changes in state counting rules could mean the public gets a clearer picture of the state of the race earlier on Election Day.

Ahead of this year’s June primary, the Nevada Secretary of State released new guidelines that will allow county election officials to begin in-person early vote counting at 8 a.m. on Election Day. Counties must also report their first set of results by 6 p.m. on Election Day for verification and quality assurance. People who access the vote counts before all polls close and the results are released must sign a form agreeing not to make them public, and could be charged with misdemeanor assault if that agreement is violated.

State law on that point is the same as in 2020, but without explicit guidelines to count ballots early on Election Day, county election officials likely counted early votes much later in the day that year, the secretary of state’s office said .

County officials were also allowed to begin counting ballots on Oct. 21, 15 days before Election Day, as was the case in 2020.

This means that, if all goes as planned, the first set of results posted publicly online on election night should include all early in-person votes and ballots received before Election Day, the secretary of state said.

That will likely make up a large majority of votes in this year’s election, as more than 1 million early and postal votes have been cast as of Sunday. Republicans have encouraged their supporters to take advantage of early and mail-in voting after falsely claiming in 2020 that the two methods were rife with fraud. Republican voters have heeded the leadership’s call — leading registered Democrats with more than 40,000 votes cast as of Sunday — and are likely to turn out in person on Election Day at much lower numbers than four years ago, because so many have already have cast their votes.

Nevada law also states that no results may be released until the last person to vote in person on Election Day has voted. The polls close at 7:00 PM local time, but people who are in line by then will be allowed to vote.

In the June primaries, the polls officially closed at 7:54 p.m., and the first results were published 10 minutes later, although turnout will be much higher in the November election, creating more lines that keep polling stations open longer.

However, spectators should be careful when looking at the initial numbers because it is not known how many ballots are still outstanding.