Headline Roundup • November 5th, 2024
Electoral College, Poll Times, Vote Counting: Essential Info for Election Day and Beyond
Summary from the AllSides News Team
The 2024 presidential election may take days or weeks to settle. Here's what you need to know and how different sides have covered it.
When Do Polls Close? The first polls open Tuesday in Vermont at 5 a.m. ET, and the final polls close in Alaska at 1 a.m. ET Wednesday. AllSides will not cover projected results until all polls have closed. Read more here.
Vote Counting Rules: State rules vary widely. Georgia started counting mail-in votes on Oct. 21, and they can be dropped off until polls close on Nov. 5. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, workers can't start counting mailed-in ballots until Tuesday. States also have differing rules for conducting recounts. See left, center, and right breakdowns from NBC News (Lean Left bias), BBC (Center), and Washington Examiner (Lean Right), and a state-by-state estimate of when results will be known from FiveThirtyEight (Center).
Electoral College: Before the election, states choose slates of electors for different parties. States are required to certify their results and electors to the Electoral College (EC) by Dec. 11. The candidate who wins the popular vote determines which slate of electors will cast electoral votes for president on Dec. 17, and on Jan. 6, 2025, a joint session of Congress will certify the EC vote. Electors pledge to vote for certain candidates and typically stand by those pledges, but aren't legally obligated to. Both Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have previously called to do away with the EC in favor of a national popular vote. Some have argued that recent population changes and Census Bureau errors have awarded Democrats more likely EC votes. See left and right breakdowns from CBS (Lean Left) and Fox News (Right).
Featured Coverage of this Story
Kamala Harris must certify the presidential election result, regardless of whether she wins or loses.
It will be her sole task to officially declare the result of the election.
Under the U.S. constitution, a vice president is automatically president of the Senate and it is the role of the Senate president to officially declare the result of a presidential election.
As the Senate website explains: "The Constitution names the vice president of the United States as the president of the Senate. In addition to serving as presiding officer, the vice president …...
When election results pour in from across the country Tuesday evening, there will likely be various close and hotly contested races that could end in a recount.
The presidential race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will likely come down to seven states considered “toss-up” contests, and any of those states’ results could end up in a recount. Here are the laws for recounts in each of the key battleground states.
Arizona: In the Grand Canyon State, the law for mandatory recounts only goes into effect if the top two candidates are within 0.5% of...
NBC News Digital
The election has already been filled with eye-popping and historically unusual events. One other potential scenario looms this fall: the "contingent election" of the president and the vice president that would happen if no one can secure the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidential election. That has not happened in the modern era, but there are a few conceivable (if unlikely) paths across the Electoral College map that could lead to former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris ending the race tied at 269 electoral votes....
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More News about 2024 Presidential Election on AllSides
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