Election Night in Bexar County: First Results Come Soon After 7 P.M., and Nothing Is Official Until Canvass
Bexar County's election night runs in stages — early and mail results first after polls close at 7 p.m., Election Day votes through the night, late mail into the next week — and every number posted that night is unofficial.
San Antonio will start getting answers at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, but it will not get final ones that night. Polls close at 7 p.m. on November 3 — with anyone in line at 7 p.m. still able to vote — and the first results are posted soon after, built from the early votes and the mail ballots counted so far, according to PlanYourVoteSA's Bexar County results guide, read this cycle. Election Day votes follow through the night as vote centers report and their ballots reach the counting center.
The count keeps moving after election night, on deadlines this station has already filed. Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day count if they arrive by 5 p.m. on November 4; military and overseas ballots can arrive through November 8 or 9; and voters fixing a problem with a mail ballot have until November 9, the guide's timeline states. Close races can shift across those days, which is why early numbers in a tight contest are a snapshot, not a finish line.
The official word comes last and slowest. Everything posted on election night is unofficial; the county's results become official only at the canvass, a public meeting of the Commissioners Court held about two weeks later, the guide said. For a county where more than 473,000 early ballots were already in by Thursday, Tuesday night's first release will be large — and still incomplete, with Election Day's voters, the largest single bloc still outstanding, counted through the night behind it.
