An I Voted sticker photographed for an election illustration

At 7 p.m. Tuesday, polling places across Fulton, Forsyth and Gwinnett counties will close, and the long wait for election results will begin. Some numbers could appear within minutes. Others may take hours.

By bedtime, a candidate may have a commanding lead. A television network may even call the race. But the vote count will not be official, and Georgia’s election workers will still have several days of work ahead of them.

That distinction can be easy to miss on an election-night map, especially in North Atlanta, where results from three different counties may arrive at different speeds.

Why the lead can change during the evening

Georgia counties count votes cast in advance, ballots mailed to election offices and ballots cast at precincts on Election Day. Those totals do not necessarily arrive together.

A batch of advance votes might appear before the election-day votes from a stretch of precincts in Alpharetta, Cumming or Suwanee. Later, a county can add another large group of ballots and change the gap between candidates. It does not mean votes were removed from the earlier total. More votes have been counted.

The county returns feed the Georgia election-results page. Even when all precincts are marked as reporting, a small number of ballots can remain under review.

Some voters have until Friday to resolve a problem

Most absentee ballots from voters in Georgia must be received by 7 p.m. Tuesday. A ballot still in the mail after that deadline generally will not count, regardless of its postmark.

But voters who returned an absentee ballot on time may have a chance to correct a problem, such as a missing signature. Some people who voted provisionally must also provide additional documentation to their county registrar. The deadline is 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6.

Eligible military and overseas absentee ballots have until Friday to arrive, provided they were sent by Election Day. Those later-arriving ballots are another reason a close race may remain unsettled after Tuesday night. The deadlines appear in the Georgia Secretary of State’s 2026 election calendar.

The counting continues after the counting

Beginning Wednesday, county election offices will reconcile ballots and voter participation totals, review discrepancies and finish deciding which provisional votes are valid. Fulton County also plans a physical ballot count to compare the number of paper ballots with the number of votes reported from polling locations, with additional review if the figures do not match.

The county’s elections information page provides details of that work and the public review process. Similar certification responsibilities apply to Forsyth and Gwinnett.

All three counties must certify their election returns by 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9. Georgia’s secretary of state then has until Friday, Nov. 20, to certify federal and statewide results.

Between those dates, a statewide risk-limiting audit will examine a sample of paper ballots from a selected contest. The audit, scheduled for Nov. 13–17, is intended to check whether the reported outcome is supported by the ballots themselves. It is separate from a recount that may be requested in a close race.

What to watch tonight

For residents refreshing the results page, the first useful question is not simply who is ahead. It is how much of each county’s vote has been counted, and which votes are still outstanding.

There is also a difference between a projected winner and a certified result. News organizations may call a race when they conclude the remaining votes cannot change the outcome. Election officials still have to finish the canvass and certify the numbers.

And if no candidate wins a majority in a race that requires one, Georgians may vote again. The state’s general-election runoff date is Tuesday, Dec. 1.

Tonight will likely answer many questions about who won. For the closest races, the clearer answers may arrive later this week.