How are Votes Counted in the World's Largest Democracy and its Strongest one?

November 8 will mark the culmination of the 2016 US Presidential election process. Whether it is Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump who will become the leader of the world's most powerful democracy will be known soon after, as the counting of votes will happen instantly.

This is in contrast to India, where General Elections 2014 was held in 9 phases between April 7-May 12 and the votes were counted a few days later.

After the contentious presidential election of 2000, USA decided to replace punched card ballots with optical scan paper ballots.

Ballots are processed before election day and the tallying of votes after polls close and the announcement of results can be done the same night.

So exactly how are votes counted after polls close?

· The machines at the polling stations are opened and the totals are recorded, a process that may take half an hour. Each polling station has a chief poll judge who records the results on an official form before reporting them to the county head.

· Each county records the results from each precinct, records them on an official form, and then they call the state and report the consolidated results.

· The state records the results from each county and reports the consolidated results. This can take upto six hours after the close of polls. The political parties can station least one representative at the state level to verify the official count.

· A month or so after the election the final numbers are available for each state.