Polling stations will be open until 7:00 p.m. on election day, although there may be queues at some polling stations even during closing time.

By law, these voters must be given the opportunity to cast their vote. Some voters have had to wait several hours on Election Day to cast their ballots in previous years, such as during the 2020 primary, when lines stretched for hours after stores closed.

This may delay the announcement of election results.

Once all ballots have been cast at a polling place, polling place managers must follow a series of safety measures. Before leaving the polling place, they must fill out paperwork detailing the number of ballots counted by ballot scanning machines and the number of voters who checked in to vote. They also have to package up the ballots and other items and bring them all back to the county’s central counting station – the place where ballots are counted on election night, the total number of votes cast is determined and unofficial results are produced.

All of this is an important part of the process. Polling station managers must pay attention to detail and ensure that everything – ballots, paperwork and equipment – ​​is recorded before it is delivered to the central counting station. In Collin County, it can take up to an hour for poll workers to complete this step after they have processed all voters and the polls have closed.

“What you’re talking about here is election integrity. You have to make sure you have a good chain of custody, meaning your documents show every single aspect of what happened at that polling place,” said Bruce Sherbet, Collin County elections director.

In large counties, returning ballots and equipment to the county’s central counting station may take time and delay election results. Giant Harris County will have election results from 700 polling locations. One of them, in Baytown, east of Houston, is 40 minutes from the county elections office.

To speed up the process, Harris and other large counties will set up substations throughout the county where poll workers can drop off their materials to begin counting votes.

Tarrant County, which will operate 349 polling places on Election Day, will have seven locations where poll workers can drop off materials, said Clint Ludwig, the county’s elections director. Harris County officials said they will have six locations throughout the county.

Once everything is submitted, election administrators review and verify the information from each polling place. Counties must post the comparison between the number of voters and the number of ballots cast on their election websites.