When will Texas election results come in? A timeline.

Polling places on Election Day are open until 7 p.m., but some polling locations could still have people waiting in line at closing time.

By law, those voters must get the opportunity to cast their ballots. Some voters have had to wait several hours to cast their ballots on Election Day in previous years, such as during the 2020 primaries, when the lines extended for hours after closing time.

This can delay the reporting of election results.

Once all ballots are cast at a voting location, polling location supervisors have a series of security measures to follow. Before leaving the polling location, they must fill out paperwork with details about the number of ballots counted by ballot scanning machines and the number of voters who checked in to vote. They must also pack up the ballots and other items and transport them all back to the county’s central counting station — the place where ballots are tallied, vote totals are determined and unofficial results are generated on election night.

All of this is an important part of the process. Polling location supervisors must pay close attention to detail and ensure everything — ballots, paperwork and equipment — is accounted for before it’s delivered to the central counting station. In Collin County, this step can take poll workers up to an hour to complete after they have processed all voters and polls have closed.

“What you’re talking about here is election integrity. You have to ensure that you have a good chain of custody, meaning your documents show every single aspect of what’s happened at that polling site,” said Bruce Sherbet, Collin County election administrator.

In large counties, getting ballots and equipment back to the county’s central counting station can take time and delay the election results. Giant Harris County will have election results coming in from 700 polling locations. One of them, in Baytown, east of Houston, is 40 minutes away from county election headquarters.

To speed up the process, Harris and other large counties will have designated substations around the county where election workers can drop off their materials to get the vote counting started.

Tarrant County, which will operate 349 polling locations on Election Day, will have seven sites where election workers can deliver materials, said Clint Ludwig, the county’s election administrator. Harris County officials said they’ll have six sites across the county.

Once everything is turned in, election administrators then review and verify the information from each polling site. Counties must post the comparison of the number of voters and the number of voted ballots on their election websites.