Watson v. Republican National Committee · ¶78

That is what the election-day statutes required when all voting occurred in person, and the same requirement applies today. Back when all voting occurred in person, the voters went to the polls on election day. They then completed ballots and turned them over to election officials. When the polls closed, those officials had in their possession a fixed collection of ballots, and taken together, those ballots embodied the electorate’s collective choice. That expression of the electorate’s choice having been made, the election-day statutes did not require that anything more be done before midnight on election day. Of course, no one could know the outcome of the election until those ballots were examined and the valid ballots were counted, but it was not necessary for those steps to be finished on election day because the electorate’s choices had been authoritatively expressed.

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