No clear winner on election night? That’s not evidence of election fraud

PolitiFact has a deep archive of stories and fact-checks explaining why a delay in election results that extends past election night is not evidence of fraud and it’s not new — it’s normal. 

But with the 2024 presidential election Nov. 5 a mere two weeks away, claims of election interference are already circulating on social media. 

"BREAKING," an Oct. 22 Threads post said, "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 post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

We contacted the secretary of state offices in each state named in the post. 

The Pennsylvania Department of State told PolitiFact in a statement that said it’s "never had final results on election night, regardless of whether media outlets project a winner on that night or a later date."

"In Pennsylvania, election workers across more than 9,000 precincts cannot begin the work of opening mail ballots and preparing them to be scanned until 7 a.m. on election day, the same time polls open for in-person voting," the statement said. "Processing and counting millions of ballots takes time, and our elections officials deserve to be able to do this work in safe environments and take the time they need to do a thorough, accurate job."

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Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s secretary of the commonwealth, has said it’s unlikely the state will declare a winner on election night. 

In Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has said she expects unofficial election results will be completed the day after Election Day.

Clerks and election workers there are not allowed to start calculating the results of ballots from early voting sites until polls close on election night, according to the Michigan Department of State’s website, though a new law lets local election officials start processing absentee mail ballots the week before election day. 

In 2020, the law precluded election workers from counting mail ballots until the night before Election Day. Former President Donald Trump had an early lead in the vote count on election night, The Associated Press reported, but only 45% of all votes were reported by midnight and "that lead began to erode overnight and early Wednesday morning." President Joe Biden took the lead later that afternoon, and Trump falsely claimed that was because of voter fraud. The new law could mean results will be more quickly reported this year after polls close.

In Georgia, elections officials can’t start processing mail ballots until the morning of Election Day. In 2020, more than three-quarters of all votes cast were reported by midnight, the AP said.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recently rebuffed former President Donald Trump’s claim that it could take seven days to count all of the state’s votes. Rather, he said in an Oct. 20 interview on CBS News’ "Face the Nation," that all of the state’s early votes must be tabulated by 8 p.m. on Election Day, and overseas ballots must be received no later than the Friday after Election Day. 

But delayed election results in Georgia weren’t evidence of election fraud in 2020, and they aren’t now. Winners in some races around the country may not be clear for days or even longer in close races. The pace of ballot counts does not amount to election interference. 

We rate claims that "the cheat has begun" because election results may not be known on election night in Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania False.