Fact Check: NOT Proof Of Cheating If Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania Do Not Have Final Results Election Night

Have key battleground states Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania officially announced that they will not have election results available on election night, pointing to election cheating already in the works? No, that’s not true: The rules for certifying election results vary between states, and some states have rules in place that result in an anticipated delay in processing all the ballots after the polls close on Election Day. This is not evidence of cheating. Election officials from several states have made public statements to help voters know when they might expect the results to be tabulated and that this may not be on election night.

The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Threads on October 22, 2024. It was captioned:

BREAKING 🚨 The Cheat Has Begun
The States of Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania have officially announced that they will not have election results available on Election Night.

This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:

(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Wed Oct 23 14:23:35 2024 UTC)

Reason for expected delay on election night

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NSCL) has a page of their website dedicated to When Absentee/Mail Ballot Processing and Counting Can Begin. It includes a table with the timing for each state when absentee/mail ballot processing can begin and when the ballot counting can begin. There is a list of the 43 states that allow election officials to begin processing absentee/mail ballots before the election — including Georgia and Michigan. A second list includes Pennsylvania — these are the remaining states plus Washington, D.C., that permit election officials to begin processing absentee/mail ballots on Election Day. The NSCL page has three additional lists of states grouped by when they allow the actual counting of the ballots to begin.

A video on the page labeled “Pre-Processing Ballots” features Wendy Underhill, director of Elections and Redistricting at NSCL, explaining the pre-processing of mail-in ballots. At 37 seconds in she explains:

Most states, and especially those with a high volume of absentee voting, allow pre-processing to begin before Election Day. Other states wait until all the ballots are in on Election Day to start processing absentee ballots. This is one reason why some states have slower results reporting than others. Whether these steps take place before or after Election Day doesn’t affect the outcomes. Either way, a vote is a vote.

It is true that top election officials from the three states named in this Threads post have made public statements regarding the expectation that the results may not be final on Election Night.

Michigan

An October 20, 2024, article in The Hill quoted Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Secretary of State, who expects that the results will be certified the day after the November 5 general election.

Georgia

On CBS News’ Face the Nation on October 20, 2024, at the 4:00 mark, Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, was asked by moderator Margaret Brennan how long it will take to tabulate the votes. He responded:

Raffensperger: In Georgia 100 percent of all the votes cast will be on a paper ballot. But actually nationwide, it’s going to be over 96 to 97 percent of all voting in America will be on paper ballots. But we also just put into law this year with SB 189 that all early votes and early accepted ballots they all will have to have their results reported by 8 p.m. That’s 70 percent, maybe even 75 percent of all the vote totals will be reported no later than 8 p.m. on election night.

Brennan: Won’t take seven days to tabulate votes, as he [Trump] said?

Raffensperger: Absolutely not. What we will be waiting for is the overseas ballots that come in no later than Friday. And so those will then be the final numbers. And we’ll just see if that makes the difference in the total vote totals.

Pennsylvania

NPR’s Morning Edition on October 22, 2024 featured Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of the Commonwealth. The five-minute segment begins by explaining:

It is unlikely that we will know who won Pennsylvania on election night. That’s because, due to a law created four years ago, election officials are not allowed to open mail-in ballots until the morning of November fifth.

When asked, at 1:33 minutes in, about his efforts to put conspiracy theories about voting fraud to rest, Schmidt explained:

It’s incumbent on all of us to make sure that one, the public is educated about what’s involved with counting their votes. And two, to have appropriate expectations for when we’ll all know who won and who lost, and by how much.

On the official website of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a page titled, “Fact-Checking Pennsylvania-Related Election Claims” reviews some common concerns. Regarding the question of whether voting by mail leads to widespread mail fraud:

Mail ballot fraud has been proven to be exceptionally rare. Claims of systemic voter fraud are devoid of any supporting evidence and have consistently been rejected by judges, government agencies, and election experts across the political spectrum.

Mail voting in Pennsylvania has multiple layers of security that involve registered voters having to provide appropriate ID before their mail ballot can be counted and that prevent any voter from casting more than one ballot in any given election.

Pennsylvanians have been voting by mail since the Civil War, and the process has a long history of being safe and secure.

Additional Lead Stories fact checks addressing claims associated with the 2024 presidential election can be found here.