News

Voter Registration Deadlines Are Coming Up

Nearly 100 Million Americans Voted Early

Why Did Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Have Trouble Voting?

On Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tried to vote in the 2020 elections. He learned his primary address had been changed without his consent. Investigators found his address had been changed through a web browser at a home in Naples, Florida. Anthony Guevara, 20, was arrested by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Guevara was charged with altering a voter registration without consent and unauthorized access of a computer. DeSantis was ultimately able to vote in the election.

How Do Votes On Election Day Get Counted?

When the polls close on Election Day and no more voting is allowed, the election judge at each polling place has poll workers seal all the ballot boxes. The boxes are sent to a central vote-counting facility. This is usually a government office, such as a city hall or county courthouse. There, if paper ballots are still used, election officials manually read each ballot and add up the number of votes in each race. Where punch-card ballots are used, election officials count the ballots by hand, then run them through a mechanical punch card reader, which prints out a tally. For absentee/mail-in ballots, they're first cross-checked against voter registration records, to ensure there's no fraud taking place. On Election Day—but never before—state election officials count the mail-in ballots, and add the tally to the ballots cast in-person. With newer, fully computerized voting systems, the vote totals are transmitted automatically, or via removable digital media, to the central counting facility.