Interactive Map: 2024 early voting surpasses 2016 and 2012

Any delay in knowing the results of an election can fuel fears of fraud if this year's presidential election. Is anything like the last one? We may not know the winner for days. Washington correspondent Jackie Defusco explains the complex process of tallying all the votes. It's election night in November, polls have closed, ballots are being counted but the night comes to an end with no clear official winner. I want to know who wins right when the polls close, just like everybody else. But it's not really realistic to expect that David Becker is the executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, *** nonpartisan organization that works with election officials all over the country. He says the voting process is complex partly because of the checks and balances involved to ensure accuracy. It's incredible how well that process works given how complex it is and how many different parts we're relying upon. So why does counting votes take so long? And is the process secure? Let's take *** look at what's involved first. Your ballot is cast in one of two ways in person or the increasingly popular vote by mail or absentee election officials track those vote by mail ballots very closely to prevent or catch any fraud. They confirm in every single state the identity of that voter to make sure they, they're the right person to return that ballot and also they haven't voted before and that's where *** big slowdown happens. Election workers must verify *** voter's eligibility and information which is usually on the envelope of the returned ballot. Once verified, the envelope is opened and the ballot separated and secured until it can legally be counted. Everything in the entire voting process has *** strict chain of custody in 43 states like Florida, Georgia and Ohio. Election workers can start some level of processing mail in or absentee ballots before election day in the remaining states including battlegrounds like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That processing cannot happen until election day, November 5th. If you vote in person, just like with absentee or mail in voting, your ballot is kept secure until it's time to count, they go into *** locked sealed ballot box in every single location. That ballot box is not opened again until the tabulation process begins. The tabulation of all ballots officially begins once the polls close, unofficial results come in quickly from in person votes counted by electronic machines and electronic ballot scanners. The votes coming by mail are also scanned once they're processed and then the counts are audited for ***, they take some of the paper ballots, they count them by hand and they compare them to the machine counts to make sure the machines didn't have any significant problems. Now, it's important to recognize that the unofficial results you see can shift and the leader can change as all of those votes are counted and confirmed when you have *** huge number of ballots, they are going to be counted last, but they skew overwhelmingly towards one party. You're going to get *** shift or *** wave in the direction of that party. That's what happened in 2020 when mail in ballots were at an all time high fueling *** fire of distrust with the election process. Even despite all of the measures in place to guarantee security and integrity, we do *** lot of training and preparatory work. We have over 10,000 poll workers. These are your friends and neighbors who are on the front line running the election process. Our elections are incredibly transparent and secure. They're more transparent and secure and verified by the courts than they have ever been in American history. So this November as our election officials work to double and triple check our ballot. They're urging Americans to wait and trust the process. Our democracy is based on the integrity of our elections and when we lose confidence in that result, our country will have fallen another important point. Official outcomes are declared by election leaders based on their final vote counts, but you will see races called on election night in the media and online. That means elections officials and analysts from places like the associated press are fully confident based on current vote counts that there is *** winner.