No, it’s not unusual for vote counting to take this long

The 2024 presidential election was held on Nov. 5, and Donald Trump was declared the winner over Kamala Harris the next day.

But weeks later, many states are still counting votes. On Nov. 20, Trump had 76,688,639 votes and Harris had 74,117,248 – 50% of the popular vote versus 48.3%.

Posts like this one online, with hundreds of thousands of likes, appear to suggest that the ongoing tabulation is suspicious, perhaps evidence of election fraud.

THE QUESTION

Is it unusual for states to still be counting votes weeks after Election Day?

THE SOURCES

• National Conference of State Legislatures
• National Archives
• U.S. Election Assistance Commission

THE ANSWER

No, it’s not unusual for states to take weeks to count votes.

WHAT WE FOUND

Election results are not finalized on Election Day; each state has a different timeline for certification that can last for weeks. This is a normal part of the election calendar and does not mean something went wrong.

Some states take longer than others to process ballots, whether because of low staffing, rules on when they can start counting, waiting for mailed ballots to arrive, or processing provisional ballots.

We don’t know exactly when each state will publish final results, but they do have legal deadlines. Some states require local elections offices to certify their results the day after the election; others give them a month. Then the states usually have a few extra days to add up and certify the statewide vote.

This means some states (as of Nov. 20, eight states) have already certified their results, whereas others may not do so for weeks. 

For presidential elections, federal law requires all states to certify their results by Dec. 11.

Although the results may take weeks to finalize, races may be “called” well before then. Various news agencies and political groups use teams of experts to analyze election results as they are made public, and declare probable winners based on those assessments, which are based in part on demographic and historical data. 

Losing candidates may often concede their race when such calls are made. But neither a media call or a candidate concession has legal weight; only the certified results matter.

There is no indication that the remaining votes yet to be tabulated will change the final outcome of the race.