How are votes for the Hall counted?

The results of the BBWAA’s 2021-22 election for the Hall of Fame will be announced this Tuesday at 6 pm. ET on MLB Network

By now, baseball fans probably know, in general, how the Hall of Fame voting process works. Members of the Baseball Writers Association of North America (BBWAA) receive their ballots, make their selections, and mail them back. Now, where exactly do those ballots go?

Well, it turns out they don’t go straight to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The ballots go to New York City, but not where many might be thinking.

No, writers do not send their picks to Major League Baseball headquarters. The mail is addressed to the headquarters of Ernst & Young, the company that certifies and validates the voting process.

That’s where all the ballots for this year’s election have been waiting — unopened — for over a month. They will stay that way until Tuesday, when the results will be tabulated before the announcement is made at 6 pm ET on MLB Network. On Tuesday, MLB Network’s Hall of Fame programming will begin at 4 pm and will also be available on MLB.com and the MLB app.

That’s right: No one, not even the Hall of Fame or the BBWAA, knows how the vote count is going, according to Jon Shestakofsky, the Hall’s vice president of communications and education. Ernst & Young is in contact with Cooperstown throughout the voting process to let them know which ballots have arrived, but the content of the ballots remains confidential.

In other words, by now, Hall of Famers know as much about who could be inducted as any fan. Like many fans, though, they’re monitoring Ryan Thibodaux’s ballot counter for an idea of ​​what could happen Tuesday night.

Thibodaux collects the information from the ballots that are revealed by reporters, whether on Twitter, in columns or other ways. Some of those ballots are known immediately after they are mailed to BBWAA members on November 22, while others are posted much closer to final announcement day. Since ballots must be postmarked on or before December 31, most arrive at Ernst & Young headquarters before the end of the year.

As for what the big day will look like, representatives from the Hall of Fame, the BBWAA and Ernst & Young will meet Tuesday to begin the countdown. The process “can take hours,” according to Shestakofsky, as each vote is counted and recounted twice before the final result is delivered to the Hall of Fame.

Only “about five” people will know what happened before the Hall of Fame contacts some potential hothead with the good news. The rest of the world will have to wait until after 6 pm ET to find out what the outcome of the year-long process is.

The Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be held on July 24 in Cooperstown.