For example, there has been a huge surge in voter registration in many of the states voting today. Many of those registration forms were turned in at the last minute. In California, 240,000 voters registered in December. In Connecticut, from November through the end of January, more than 34,000 new voters registered. Already there have been reports of administrators not being able to effectively enter that registration information into the registration database. This is likely to result in voters showing up at the polls, not being on the registration list, and having to cast a provisional ballot.

In addition, in some states, notably Georgia, there are new voter identification rules in place. There will likely be voters who come to vote who do not have the specifically required ID, at least in the poll workers’ estimation. These voters too will be asked to cast a provisional ballot, and in some cases, come back to a different government office with the requisite ID within a certain number of days for the ballot to be counted.

The problem is we are unlikely to know the number of provisional ballots cast right away, and we will not know how many were counted for possibly days. Moreover, we may not know for an even longer length of time why that provisional ballot was cast. How many people were left off the list and possibly disenfranchised because of administrative error or strict information matching policies that cause election administrators to reject legitimate voter registration applications? How many eligible voters showed up at the polls without the right ID and had to vote provisionally? These are questions that will remain unanswered in the immediate aftermath of the election, yet are of critical importance to monitoring how well our election system is functioning.

There is also the issue of absentee ballots. Early, absentee ballots have been cast at unprecedented rates this primary season, especially in Illinois and California. Many voters cast ballots so early that they have already disenfranchised themselves—by voting for a candidate who has dropped out of the race, like Rudolph Giuliani and John Edwards. Those voters cannot go to the polls today and make a new choice; they are out of the game.

Absentee ballots are paper and the signature on each must be verified. This means they take a long time to count. Absentee ballots that were cast late or even brought in today may not be completely counted for days. In California, about 4.1 million mail-in ballots are expected, about half of the expected turnout, and there are still over one million outstanding absentee ballots that will likely be dropped off at the polls or received by mail today. The results in this big and important state—from the perspective of calling a winner but also from the point of view of assessing the voting system—may not be known for some time.

Moreover, mail-in ballots, especially ones cast late, have their own inherent problems. For example, if a voter makes an important error on the ballot, there is no way he or she can correct the ballot, and the vote will not be counted. We also probably will not know right away what kind of problems military and overseas voters experienced. As written about before, due to their special logistical needs, military and overseas voters face special challenges in getting their vote in and in on time. Since such ballots will for the most part not be counted by the end of today, and can even be received after today, we will not know any time soon how many military and overseas voters participated and what kind of problems they encountered.

Finally, if there are close races within congressional districts in states that apportion delegates proportionately by congressional district, there may be post-election recounts and possibly even disputes. In a race where every delegate may count, it is possible that tussling over the vote counts in individual districts could go on well past the election. These sorts of highly scrutinized events all too often lead to, at minimum, accusations of irregularities.

While much of the media today is already and will focus on the inevitable myriad voting machine malfunctions and the like, the press and those who care about our voting system as a whole should remain mindful that the problems of the election may prove more elusive than our demand for instant information can fulfill.

Tova Andrea Wang is a Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation.