After the polls close on election night, election workers process and report the results of each race. They double, sometimes triple check each step of the process.
In downtown Pulaski, Leann Phillips oversees the county’s election office.
“Each election that we go through, there is always a calm before the storm,” Phillips said.
At 7 p.m., when the polls close, Phillips, her staff, and three members of the local electoral board wait for precincts to call with results.
“But there’s still like an electric buzz, cause you know the phones are getting ready to start ringing with the results being called in,” Phillips recalled with a chuckle.
At each precinct, workers are printing off results from voting machines. We’re talking reams of paper. Then they have to write down the numbers on a paper form.
“So they actually have to physically go and write it down,” Phillips said. “And there has to be two different people that look at it and make sure that the numbers are all correct.”
All the paper documents are signed by the worker who fills it out. Phillips’ office reviews it after the election, to make sure no mistakes were made.
“We’re humans. We can make errors,” said Sybil Atkinson, secretary of Pulaski County’s electoral board. “But with all the checks and balances, it’s caught.”
Atkinson said the best way to learn what actually goes on during election night is to become an election worker.
“Because you can see then the things that you hear about in the news. You can see, it really couldn’t happen,” Atkinson said.
But in recent years, misinformation about election fraud has increased across the country, said Karen Hult, professor of political science at Virginia Tech.
“There is very little evidence of massive voter fraud. We just don’t have that evidence,” Hult said. “And yet the allegations are made again and again and again.”
She said in cases where there are allegations of fraud it’s easy to go back and check that things were done by the book.
Election workers spend hours on election night, scrupulously reviewing each step in the counting process, before results are reported.
“That’s why it seems like, oh there’s such delay. That doesn’t mean that there’s fraud going on, it means that everybody’s being very careful about counting and recounting everything,” Hult said.
Susan Beals is the Commissioner for the Virginia Department of Elections. She told state legislators last month mail-in results will probably be available sooner on election night than they were back in 2020.
That’s because new laws say election offices must process all mail-in votes before election day.
“So now, they must be pre-processed by the Saturday before the election,” Beals said. “That means, that when you get to election day, you’re all caught up, the only ballots you have left to count are the ones that might come in on election day.”
Though these changes should cut down on delays with reporting absentee votes, she said her office has concerns with the United States Postal Service delivering last minute mail-in votes in time.
She recommended voters make sure they mail their votes as soon as possible, especially in rural areas.
Late-arriving mail ballots are counted, as long as they’re postmarked on or before the day of the election and received in the registrar’s office by noon on the Friday after November 5th.
Back at the Pulaski County election office, Atkinson said she believes Virginia has made progress in recent years making voting more accessible, by expanding absentee voting.
“I feel like, I was brought up that voting is a part of your job as an American citizen. Once we come on the board we are working for all the citizens of Pulaski County to exercise their right to vote,” Atkinson said.
On election night, the electoral board members are tasked with hand transcribing results from precincts. They get those numbers over the phone, write them down, then hand that paper to the county registrar.
None of this is done over email—and there’s a paper trail for the entire process.
The registrar, Leann Phillips, is the only person in Pulaski County with access to enter the election results on the Virginia Department of Elections website.
“It is in real time. So when I report, it will automatically show up on there as I’m reporting each of the precincts,” Phillips said.
The first results usually begin showing up on the state elections website around 8 p.m.
Phillips admits she sometimes feels disheartened. Despite all the care they take, some people still doubt the credibility of elections.
“Because you put so much of yourself into this job,” Phillips said. “Even my family would tell you that it takes up so much of my time, because I love it.”
The day after the election, she and the electoral board go back over all the paper documents, ensuring that no mistakes were made. They are required to save most paperwork from the election in a locked office for two years.
“So that way if there’s ever any questions, we can say, oh no, we checked this this and this,” Phillips said.
After the election, local electoral boards review provisional ballots, as well as absentee votes that arrive after election day.
So that means vote totals will continue to change for several days after the election.