PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — County elections officials are working around the clock to count the hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots that still remain to be tallied. But it could be days before enough of those votes are counted to call the winner of Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes.
Mail-in ballots from Philadelphia are now being counted at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
But before officials can run ballots through a scanner, Commissioner Al Schmidt said officials have to first sort them by ward and district, inspect them, make sure there is a proper signature, and then run them through an “extraction machine” twice to remove the ballot from two envelopes.
According to state law, that process could not officially begin until 7 a.m. Election Day.
Schmidt said the machines can take 30,000 ballots at a time, but officials are averaging about 10,000 an hour because of the process.
Commissioner Lisa Deeley said about 350,000 mail-in ballots are in the building, with more expected to be brought in throughout the night from the mail and drop boxes.
As the clock ticked toward midnight, state Senate Republican leaders called on Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to resign, accusing her of changing guidance and, in their words, undermining public confidence in the election.
When asked for her thoughts, Boockvar fired back.
“Frankly, I think they’re the ones who should resign for not having allowed Pennsylvania to start pre-canvassing ballots early,” she said.
Pre-canvassing is opening the ballots and flattening them, getting them ready to feed into the scanner.
Counties had asked for 21 days to prep the ballots, but ended up with zero after the governor and Senate Republicans couldn’t reach an agreement.
Bucks County officials say it took them about seven hours to prep 55,000 of the 160,000 ballots they need to count.
It’s easy to see why mail-in ballots are so contested — 1.65 million mail-in ballots returned in Pennsylvania are from registered Democrats, compared to 600,000 from Republicans.