Provisional Ballots - What To Watch On Election Night - Hour By Hour

WASHINGTON Stock up on munchies and help make sure that battery power in your TV remote computer repair are generally fresh. With that year's presidential election razor-close in order to the particular finish, Tuesday should be a long night.

Even if your presidency isn't made a decision until right after night time EST, we will have enough signs earlier in the evening on exactly how issues are going for President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. Obama provides extra choices for piecing together that 270 electoral votes required for victory, thus any kind of quick setbacks with regard to Romney might be important portents with how the night time will probably end.

Here's a plan regarding armchair selection watchers on how an overnight will unfold, influenced by what exactly period your last polls nearby within each one state. All times tend to be EST.

_7 p.m.: Polls nearby in half a dozen claims but many sight will certainly be with Virginia, the best on the battleground states to begin confirming results. If possibly customer can be comfortably onward in Virginia, together with 13 electoral votes, that is certainly your leading indication regarding which way this night will be going.

Virginia typically have been relatively rapid at keeping track of ballots. But there is a innovative voter ID rules within the express which could complicate issues this year. Voters who seem to really don't deliver identification into the polls continue to provide his or her ballots counted as long as they create ID through Friday. If your species inside Virginia is definitely super tight, it could possibly fall to the people provisional ballots . On Election Night, use of can even knowledge many are released there.

Virginia is usually specifically essential for Romney. In 2008, Obama turned the 1st Democratic presidential candidate to be able to hold Virginia seeing that 1964. Keep tabs on turnout within northern Virginia's Democratic strongholds intended for a great quick prospect of which manner this assert will go.

_7:30 p.m.: Polls close within several states, like all-important Ohio (18 electoral votes) and also cut-throat North Carolina (15).

If Ohio can be mainly close, and polls suggest search for be, there's a chance end result presently there probably will not known till after Election Day, and also the actual presidency might hinge on it. In the third many elections, somewhere between couple of percent and three percentage of the particular state's votes came from provisional ballots , which in turn aren't counted until finally later. In 2004, following a new long, tense night keeping track of votes, the presidential battle had not been made a decision till 11 a.m. the following day, whenever Democrat John Kerry known as President George Bush for you to confess Ohio plus the presidency.