How Do Votes On Election Day Get Counted?

When the polls close on Election Day and no more voting is allowed, the election judge at each polling place has poll workers seal all the ballot boxes.

The boxes are sent to a central vote-counting facility.

This is usually a government office, such as a city hall or county courthouse.

There, if paper ballots are still used, election officials manually read each ballot and add up the number of votes in each race.