When will Nevadans know the winners of Tuesday’s elections?

As the polls close on Nevada’s 2022 election, weary voters may be wondering when they will learn who won the many tight races.

Spoiler alert: It won’t be Tuesday.

A combination of close races and the rules for receiving and counting mail ballots virtually guarantee results won’t become clear for several days. And that’s just Nevada. It could take even longer to decide some races in other states.

On Election Day, once all voters have cast their ballots and all polling places are closed, counties across Nevada will begin releasing their results, and transmitting them to the secretary of state’s office, where they will be posted onto a results website.

The results of all in-person early and Election Day voting will be released sometime on the night of the election, along with all mail-ballot results that have been tabulated by Election Day. No results will be released until every voter in every county has finished casting a ballot.

The Review-Journal will post election results on its website, along with coverage of all the major races, once results are released.

There will, however, be mail ballots that arrive after Election Day that will still be counted and that could change results, especially in close races. (To be counted, all mail ballots must be postmarked no later than Election Day, and received by county election offices by Nov. 12.)

Final unofficial results should be released by Nov. 15, seven days after Election Day, and certified by counties by Nov. 18. The Nevada Supreme Court will conduct a canvass of the election results on Nov. 22, when the results will become official.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria said he anticipates a smooth count this year, in part because election staff no longer have to adjust to the relatively new process of counting the reams of mail ballots the county will receive.

The vote count in Nye County will also bear watching and could impact results of some of the close statewide races. Nye County plans to count all ballots by hand starting after the polls close Tuesday, although the county will still use electronic machines to count ballots as well.

Nye officials tried to count mail ballots before Election Day but its plan was repeatedly rejected by the secretary of state’s office.

Interim Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf said Friday that he does not anticipate being able to restart the hand count before Tuesday.

“I don’t see that happening just from a logistics point of view, but we will start s soon as we can to fulfill the requirements they’ve established,” Kampf said.

Kampf also said that Nye will not be able to hand count every ballot before the deadline for the county to canvass the vote on Nov. 18.

“We won’t be able to do that,” he said.

In the last midterm election in 2018, results were delayed because of long lines at polling places on Election Day. But this was before the Nevada Legislature changed the law in 2020 to send every active registered voter a mail ballot. In 2020, the first election with mail ballots, it took several days to call some key races, including the presidential race, which wasn’t called until the Saturday after Election Day.

Contact Steve Sebelius at SSebelius@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253. Follow @SteveSebelius on Twitter. Staff writer Colton Lochhead contributed to this report.