Todd Bookman/ NHPR
Sample ballots for the 2024 New Hampshire Presidential Primary are on display at Durham Town Hall.
New Hampshire Public Radio | By Todd Bookman
On Election Day, hundreds of thousands of Granite Staters will head to the polls to cast ballots. Late into the evening, local election officials and volunteers will tally up those votes, along with absentee ballots, and then announce results.
But that is far from the end of the election process.
In the days and weeks after Nov. 5, it's possible some will promote misinformation or make inaccurate claims about voting and ballot counting procedures.
With that in mind, this overview aims to offer clarity about how the process works in New Hampshire, laying out the steps in place to help ensure voting and tallying here runs smoothly.
Here’s what to expect in the days and weeks after you hand off your ballot to your local poll worker.
How are results compiled and announced?
On Election Day, polls will close at 7 p.m. in some New Hampshire communities, but stay open until 8 p.m in others. (You can look up your local polling location and operating hours here.)
As polls close, more than 2,500 local election officials — and thousands more volunteers —will get to work counting ballots. The majority of New Hampshire residents live in cities and towns that use electronic ballot counting machines, while more than 120 mostly smaller towns still hand count ballots.
“The process on Election Day is a start-to-finish process,” Secretary of State David Scanlan told reporters during a press conference this week. “It's continuous and it's observable.”
Ballot tabulation in New Hampshire is open to all members of the public to observe, and both major political parties appoint volunteers to help manage the process.
Once the tallies are complete, the election moderator in each polling place publicly announces the results, and the final tallies are posted inside of the polling place.
“Voter confidence is dependent on the voters believing that their vote is going to be accurately counted,” said Scanlan. “And there's no question that with the system that we have in New Hampshire, the checks and balances that are at play, that we have a great process that does that.”
He noted that every person completes a paper ballot in New Hampshire, meaning there’s a backup if some problem arises with machine counters.
As local election results are publicly announced inside of polling places, media organizations gather those tallies and begin to disseminate results. Some media outlets – including the Associated Press, which NHPR relies on for official election results – will “call” races for candidates based on their own computations, but those aren’t official results. Candidates may declare victory or concede a race, but that too carries no formal authority.
(On Election Night, NHPR will publish real-time results as they are gathered by the AP. You can watch along at nhpr.org.)
The morning after
Local election officials are expected to announce results in their cities and towns late Tuesday night or perhaps in the early hours of Wednesday, Nov. 6.
Under state law, a copy of each town’s “Return of Votes” form capturing those results from each polling place is collected and transported by the New Hampshire State Police to the Secretary of State’s office in Concord, and a copy is also submitted electronically. The deadline for these forms to be submitted is 8 a.m. Wednesday, the day after the election.
Local moderators also have 48 hours after polls close to send the Secretary of State’s office what’s known as a “Post-election Certification.” This includes the number of voters who cast ballots according to the checklist, as well as the number of spoiled and uncast ballots, along with other information. This worksheet allows election officials, as well as interested members of the public, to reconcile the final results with the number of voters who participated in the election, and the ballot inventory.
In the days following the election, the Secretary of State’s office will also carry out random audits of electronic counting devices to confirm results, which are open to the public to observe. Eight randomly selected machines will be examined, and a limited hand count of paper ballots will also be conducted. State law requires these audits to be completed before 12 p.m. on the Friday following the election.
Recounts
There are no automatic recounts for New Hampshire elections. If the spread between the candidates is equal to or less than 20% of the total votes cast, then the losing candidate can request a recount.
The deadline for requesting a recount this year is Friday, Nov. 8th at 5 p.m. If history is a guide, recounts will be scheduled for the following week, but there is no timetable prescribed in state law.
The candidate who requests a recount must pay a fee, which is on a sliding scale depending on how close the initial results are. Members of the public can observe recounts, and representatives from major political parties are typically involved in the recount process. If the recount yields a different vote tally than the initial tally, that second number is acknowledged as the official result.
How does certification work?
There is no deadline for the formal certification of election results in New Hampshire, the final step in the naming of the winner of an election.
Scanlan, the secretary of state, says his office “aims to complete the process before the deadline to request a recount” which is, again, the Friday following the election. His office will post final election results here.
After final results are announced — and any recounts or challenges in court have been exhausted — Scanlan’s office will certify all state-level races, while the governor's office is tasked with certifying all federal races. In practice, the Secretary of State’s office creates a physical certificate.
In early December, Scanlan will present the results of the presidential and congressional contests to the Executive Council in what his office says is an “acknowledgement that the Return of Votes have been properly tabulated and reported.” However, the Secretary’s office was unable to point to a statute that requires this vote by the Council take place, so in practice this appears to be a ceremonial step.
The last piece of the puzzle is the meeting of the Electoral College, which is scheduled for Dec. 17. Electors from the winning party in the presidential race will gather in all 50 states to formally cast their votes, depending on the popular vote total in their home state. Then, on Jan. 6, 2025 during a joint session of Congress, New Hampshire’s four electoral votes will be tallied alongside the votes of other states.