The election results reported on TV and online after the polls close are unofficial and may change as ballots are counted. A jurisdiction’s final official results are only certified once all valid votes have been tallied and verified by those legally responsible. The figure below outlines the typical steps that election officials complete before they can certify their final results.
During the canvass, local election officials review informal results reported on Election night and in the days following. They also add outstanding ballots (such as provisional, absentee and early voting ballots) to ensure that all eligible votes are included in the final results. They then re-examine and re-tabulate those results to confirm that they are accurate.
After all ballot counting tasks are completed, a county board will submit its certification of its own election results to the State Board for aggregation and publication/posting. The State Board will then certify all counties’ election results in accordance with NYS law.
The 2020 presidential election has the highest stakes of any in recent history. With the country divided between two distinct ideological factions, control of Congress is at stake, and a new president will need to be able to build a bipartisan coalition to govern.
Amid heightened election-related uncertainty, we know that voters want to be confident that their vote is counted accurately. A national survey found that over half of voters say they are not very or not at all confident that their vote was tallied correctly in 2016.