All 41 of Washoe County’s vote centers are officially closed, after several high-turnout locations wrapped up operations before 10 p.m.
Registrar of Voters Andrew McDonald said operations ran smoothly, with few issues.
“We put out small fires here and there, but in reality, it's been a very flawless election. I'm very happy about it,” he said.
That’s despite unusually high turnout for a midterm election without any U.S. Senate races. McDonald estimated at least 58.2% of Washoe County’s roughly 330,000 registered voters cast their ballots. Mail ballots made up the largest share, with nearly 102,000 accepted by his office so far. Almost 55,000 people voted early and about 35,000 people showed up on Election Day.
“When you look at the 2024 general election, we had 41,000 vote in person. So, we weren't that far off,” McDonald said.
That number will continue to rise as mail ballots are processed over the next four days.
Election officials will release the first batch of unofficial results tonight, including early voting and mail ballots that have already been tabulated. Washoe County will then post updated results approximately every hour until 3 a.m.
After tonight, the county will update results once a day by 6 p.m.
“Election Day may be over, but the work is far from done. The last day to cure your ballot is the 9th of November and provisionals will be the 6th,” McDonald added.
Provisional ballots are often cast by students who come from other states, and require additional checks to ensure those voters aren’t casting ballots in other jurisdictions.
“I think voter excitement is there,” McDonald said. “There's different, obviously, opinions on where the economy is, where the country is. There's a lot of local races on the ballot. So, I'm very curious to see these first results myself.”
