Even though more than 1 million mail-in ballots have already been returned in Pennsylvania, they won’t be opened and counted until election day. Officials there are bracing for a marathon of vote counting.
In what some are calling the most contentious swing state of the 2024 election, all the signs indicate that getting election results on the evening of Nov. 5 would pretty much be a miracle. Here’s why.
A mail-in voting law was passed in Pennsylvania in 2019 that allows for no-excuse absentee ballots, but it is still one of seven states doesn’t allow pre-canvassing of votes, Spotlight PA explained. That means that processing of all votes must start no earlier than 7 a.m. on election day.
“Workers across the commonwealth must deal with these ballots at the same time the polls are open, functionally running two elections at once, which can cause delays in unofficial results being available,” Spotlight PA said.
This process was rough in 2020, the first presidential election after the mail-in voting law was passed, according to the outlet. Election workers hadn’t dealt with it before, and mail-in voting was particularly high since COVID-19 lockdown orders were still in place. With all this confusion, the state’s vote processing became the target of conspiracy theories by former President Donald Trump, who even demanded that the count stop at one point.
Now running again as the GOP’s candidate for the Oval Office, Trump has continued to claim that fraud cost him the 2020 election, even though he has provided no proof to back up his claims. Trump’s claims hit Pennsylvania’s top elections official, lifelong Republican and Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, hard.
When he heard Trump discussing the Pennsylvania count in 2020, Schmidt brought together his communications team together to reassure voters. He said the rumors spread quickly about “truckloads of ballots” and “zombie voters.”
“What we saw in 2020, is we saw that window of time between the polls being closed at 8 p.m. on election night and the race being called as a period of vulnerability where people were seeking to undermine confidence in the results,” he said in a recent interview with NPR.
Back then, it took the state four days to count the votes (including a record 375,000 mail-in ballots) and to call the election for current President Joe Biden. With Pennsylvania’s significant 19 votes in the Electoral College, those days left the entire race in the balance as well.
CBS News reported that Schmidt has been on a campaign this election season to dispel rumors about the vote count in his state. Another difference this year, according to Spotlight PA, is that election officials have more experience and there has been investments into improving the election process through a state-funded grant program. Some of these funds have gone towards machines that can open and sort ballots.
“We’re figuring anywhere from 70 to 80,000 mail-in ballots in Lehigh County,” Lehigh County Executive Phil Armstrong said, per NPR. “You can’t open up those ballots that day and hand take them all out and have the results done an hour or two after the polls close, which people are used to. And the longer it takes, the more people think something’s wrong.”
According to CNN, Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein said the odds of knowing the Pennsylvania results on election night at “almost zero.”
“People are used to thinking, oh, we’re going to know the results ten or 11 at night,” Schmidt said. “And you might. But those hardworking civil servants and professionals at the county and state level, their work doesn’t stop once a network or station calls and says who won and who lost.”
Most of the mail-in ballots in 2020 were for Democratic voters, so CNN noted that some election observers are concerned that the wait in Pennsylvania will create what it called a “red mirage” as Republican votes get counted first. With the expected mirage, there are also concerns about a fresh wave of election fraud conspiracies. However, with Schmidt’s ongoing campaign, voters will also be more prepared this time around with the knowledge that they will likely have to wait for results.