Star Editorial

Hundreds of millions of Americans will cast their votes for the next President of the United States on Tuesday and tens of millions have already done so. While Mississippi does not allow for early voting, the majority of states have some form of early voting either in person or via mail.

Conducting elections are an organizational feat that require thousands of workers, both paid and volunteer, to make sure all of the necessary equipment is in order, ballots are correct, voter registrations are updated and everyone’s vote gets counted.

While the COVID-19 pandemic helped popularize early voting, ballot drop off, mail-in ballots and other forms of voting outside of going to a polling locations, the convenience of avoiding lines or having to make an extra stop adds another layer of complexity to an already highly complex system.

When combined, all of these factors point to one thing: we may not know who won on Election Day.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, with Mississippi, in the Central time zone, being the second of the nation’s time zones to begin reporting results. The east coast will end an hour earlier at 6 p.m. our time, while places such as Colorado and Wyoming will end voting at 8 p.m. our time and the west coast at 9 p.m. There are some outliers that do their own thing, such as Arkansas, which closes polls at 7:30 p.m., as well.

Voting will wrap up with Alaska and Hawaii, which will close voting precincts at 11 p.m. our time.

It will take several hours, if not longer, after polls close for states to count enough ballots to generate any meaningful data about how their electoral votes might be allocated. Large numbers of absentee or early ballots, which some states only begin counting after the precinct votes are tallied, can also delay a clear picture from forming.

Current polling put Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump as neck and neck heading into Election Day, and such a close race could be decided by the tiniest of margins. Should that happen, it will likely be Wednesday or later before one candidate or the other, with any certainty, can be declared the winner.

Presidential elections tend to draw political pundits like the Super Bowl does armchair quarterbacks, and there will be no shortage of predictions on every news channel. Despite the fancy charts, touchscreen maps and county-level analysis, the 2024 presidential election, however, may end up being less about prognosticating and more an exercise of our patience.