As the polls close at 7 p.m., the Shelby County Election Commission’s vote count will be a bit different this time because of a new state law called the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act.

The act requires an audit of absentee ballots — specifically the absentee totals in five random precincts.

Until this election, the election commission didn’t count absentee ballots by precinct.

The change allows for a precinct audit of the mail-in ballots. The count will take some time in advance of an election commission audit to certify the vote. That audit will conclude after Election Day but before certification.

What this means is: Early voting numbers, which are the first vote totals released after the polls close, won’t include the absentee total. Up until now, absentee votes have been included in the first release.

Absentee balloting accounted for 1,566 of the 44,647 votes cast during the 14 days of early voting.

“I have to wait until 7 p.m. before I can tally any of them. And it will take roughly an hour to do 142 precincts,” said Shelby County Elections Administrator Linda Phillips. “So we will have early voting numbers as soon as people have finished voting at the precincts.”

But the absentee vote totals will be separate and will come at least an hour later.

Absentee voting continued after early voting ended this past Saturday. It goes up to the time the Election Day polls close.

The 7 p.m. poll closing is also the deadline for absentee ballots to arrive at the election commission, delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. State law forbids voters from hand-delivering their completed absentee ballots to the election commission.

If an absentee ballot is received at the election commission after 7 p.m. — even if it is postmarked the day before Election Day — it cannot be counted by state law.

“At 7 p.m., the election commission will meet and select the five random precincts that we are going to audit after the election,” Phillips said of the added audit requirement. “We can’t start until 7 because we can get (absentee) ballots until 7. The post office will do their last run at about 6:45.”

One more note about the numbers you are about to see on our website’s election results in the left column: These are numbers we get directly from the Shelby County Election Commission. They are considered unofficial results until accountants review and the election commission votes to certify them.

The certified results usually change by a handful, usually the result of provision ballots, which are sealed in an envelope to be considered after Election Day by bipartisan teams.