As Election Day in the United States looms, many Americans have already cast their votes in early voting in person or by mail. Others will vote in person at registered polling booths on Tuesday.

Here is how voting in the US works:

Who conducts elections in the US?

The US does not have a centralised election system.

While the Federal Election Commission enforces federal campaign finance laws, including monitoring donations and public funding for presidential campaigns, the elections themselves are conducted by local authorities within each state.

These authorities adhere to local, state and federal laws as well as being guided by the US Constitution. Hence, election rules vary among states. According to Ballotpedia in 2020, more than 10,000 local entities administered elections in the US.

What time do polls open and close?

Timing depends on the state and municipality. Some polls in Vermont, for example, open as early as 5am Eastern time (ET) (10:00 GMT) in a country with six time zones.

In many states, polls open between 7am and 8am ET (12:00 to 13:00 GMT), including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Florida.

In Hawaii, polls don’t open until noon ET (17:00 GMT), which is 7am local time.

Polling stations close between 7pm ET and 1am ET (00:00 to 06:00 GMT).

How do voters cast their votes?

In the US, no one is required by law to cast a vote. The US does not have a system of online voting.

Voters are assigned polling locations within each district. These locations are generally public buildings, such as convention centres, libraries, schools and community centres.

In these locations, voters enter private polling booths to fill out their ballots.

Hand-marked ballots

Most voters in the US vote with hand-marked paper ballots. Typically, voters fill in an oval or square next to their preferred candidate’s name.

According to the Philadelphia-based nonpartisan organisation Verified Voting, nearly 70 percent of registered voters live in jurisdictions that use hand-marked paper ballots.

Ballot-marking devices

Some jurisdictions provide ballot marking devices (BMDs) that allow voters to cast their votes on a digital device. The device then produces a paper record of the vote. About 25 percent of registered voters live in jurisdictions that use BMDs for all voters.

Direct recording electronic voting

A small number of voters cast their votes using a direct recording electronic (DRE) voting system, with which voters press a button or touchscreen to cast their votes, which then go directly into the computer system. In 2020, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas used DRE machines, according to the Council of State Governments website.

Some DRE systems are connected to a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail printer, which produces a paper record of each vote that the voters can confirm before their vote is recorded in the computer.

Five percent of registered voters live in jurisdictions that use DREs for all voters.

How many people have already voted in the US?

All US states allow voters to cast their ballots before Election Day. Mail-in ballots are the most common method of early voting. All except three states also allow in-person voting before Election Day.

In Alabama, early voting started on September 11 as the state distributed mail-in ballots.

As of Sunday, 77,317,453 people in the US had already cast their votes, according to a tracker on AP News. It is estimated that more than 230 million people are eligible to vote in the US. But only about 160 million of them are registered voters, and not all of them will actually vote.

What ID is required to cast a vote in the US?

It depends on the state.

Thirty-five states require voters to show some form of valid ID. For 25 of these states, this has to be a photo ID. Commonly accepted forms of ID include a driver’s licence or passport.
Fifteen states do not require voters to show any ID at polling stations. For example, Nevada does not require voters to bring ID. Instead, voters are asked to sign their name at the polling station, and the signature is compared with the signature and ID they provided when they registered to vote.

Some states that do not require an ID still require voters to show their ID if it is their first time voting or if they did not provide valid ID at the time of registration.

How does the vote count work?

In the US, there is no federal system of counting votes, and the vote count is left up to the states.

Hand-marked paper ballots and ballots marked by BMDs are typically counted using optical scanners and then tabulated digitally to obtain a final tally. Different states have different methods of re-counting and verifying the final count.

States have until December 11 to certify their election results.

What happens next?

The president is not elected directly by the popular vote but instead by the Electoral College.

Under this system, each state has the same number of electors in the Electoral College as its number of seats in the US House of Representatives and Senate. The US has a total of 538 electors, who are appointed by the parties and are almost always party officials or supporters. To win, a candidate needs 270 Electoral College votes.

These electors will meet on December 17 this year to cast the vote for president and vice president.

All states except two operate a winner-takes-all system in choosing their electors, meaning all their Electoral College votes go to whichever candidate wins the most votes.

The only exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, whose Electoral College votes could be split between parties. Their distribution is based on the popular vote within the state and at congressional district levels.

There have been cases in previous elections in which electors have gone against the state’s vote, casting their vote for another candidate. They are called “faithless electors”.

In the highly unlikely but not impossible event of a tie – 269 electoral votes each – the US House of Representatives would decide the next president in what is known as a “contingent election”. Each state’s delegation in the lower chamber of Congress would cast one vote. A candidate must receive a majority of those votes to win.

The US Senate would then choose the vice president with each senator casting one vote and a simple majority (51 votes) required to win.

This means it is theoretically possible that Trump could be voted in as president alongside Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz or Harris could be voted in alongside Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance.