Learn Russian: Голосование закончилось намного раньше.

In Russian, when a phase verb (verbs about starting, continuing, or ending) is intransitive—meaning the subject itself is ending, rather than someone ending it—we use the reflexive form. Here, the voting (голосование) ended itself, so it acts as the Nominative subject and takes the reflexive закончилось. If we used the non-reflexive закончило, we would need a direct object, meaning the voting finished something else!

Why does the verb end in -ось instead of -ся?

Reflexive verbs in the past tense change their ending to match the gender of the subject. Because голосование is a neuter noun, the base past tense verb takes the neuter ending -ло. The reflexive particle attaches as -сь after a vowel and -ся after a consonant. So, we combine them: закончило + сь = закончилось.

Why use the perfective закончилось instead of the imperfective заканчивалось?

We use the perfective aspect here because the sentence states a single, completed fact with a clear result: the voting has come to a definitive end. If we used the imperfective заканчивалось, it would mean the action was in progress ("the voting was ending") or happened repeatedly ("the voting used to end").

Could I say очень раньше instead of to mean "much earlier"?