How your vote goes from the ballots, to being officially counted

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) - As election night approached on Tuesday, we got answers on how your vote goes from the ballot, to an officially counted vote.

We found out it’s a multi-step process to make sure your vote is counted after you cast your ballot.

As the lines begin to shorten, and the polls begin to close at the end of election day, some may wonder what’s the next step?

City clerks across the Bay State will have a long and busy night ahead as they close out their polling locations and tally up the votes.

Ray La Raja, a UMass Amherst political science professor told us that city clerks have five tasks to complete once the polls close, the first one being poll closing procedures.

“They have to make sure that everyone online by closing time gets to vote and close the polling stations officially,” he said.

Step two: Count the votes; including in person and absentee ballots.

“Now, Massachusetts, they can start counting those beforehand, in some states like Pennsylvania, we might not know the election there for a while because they can’t officially start counting them till the polls close.”

Step three: Report the results.

“They take the vote totals from each polling station, report to some central location, usually the Secretary of State as it is here in Massachusetts.”

Step four: Verify and certify results.

“They have to, in some cases, often recount some places where the votes don’t tally up necessarily, some irregularities suspected.”

Step 5: Officially certify the votes.

“Once the votes are counted, election officials say these are our official tallies, this is what Massachusetts is reporting as our final result,” La Raja concluded.

Typically, Massachusetts gets their final vote count in fairly quickly, but certain battle ground states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin may have more delays than others before officially getting the total tallies.