UPDATED: 5:09 p.m.
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden continues to lead President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania — a state the Republican must win to have a shot at re-election.
Biden has a 12,325 vote lead on the president in Pennsylvania. And while the Democrat is pushing closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, the race is too close to call — and the votes are still being counted.
In Philadelphia, that process continues at the Pennsylvania Convention Center as protestors gather outside.
Votes tabulated in Philadelphia and other counties, where the count is ongoing, more than erased the 18,000-vote lead the president had statewide a day prior. Biden now enjoys a lead over the incumbent.
Mayor Jim Kenney, speaking alongside city commissioners and the City Council president at the Convention Center, said he believes Biden has won the election.
Referring to the Trump campaign's lawsuits in states where vote-counting continues — notably, states where Biden is in the lead — Kenney said the president needs to "put his big-boy pants on," acknowledge that he has lost the election, and congratulate the winner.
City Commissioner Lisa Deeley, who is leading the Philadelphia County Board of Elections operation, said more than 690,000 votes have been counted in Philadelphia. Of that, about 338,000 are mail-in ballots, and 353,000 were votes cast in person.
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She said this is by far the largest number of mail-in ballots in the city's history. The $5 million machinery purchased for this effort is helping, but the operation is still massive.
“We are fortunate to have that machinery to allow us to count faster, but it is still a process, so we get all of these envelopes in and it’s like an assembly line,” she said. “First, you have the envelopes. You sort them and then you have to open them and then you have to open them again to get the secrecy envelope out, then someone actually sits at a desk and is pulling the content.
“Then the ballots have to be back-bended and prepared for the scanner.”
And, there’s still more to come. Deeley said there were at least 40,000 yet to be processed, and it may take several days to complete. She said among them were a number of ballots that required review, some that were provisional, and some from members of the military and citizens overseas.
She reminded voters that election results will not be certified until 20 days after Election Day.
City Commissioner Omar Samir said democracy is in the works as the counting process continues.
“We saw Octavius — the statue of Octavius Cato right on City Hall — he died so that Americans could have access to the democratic process,” he said. “And as we stand here in 2020 and people still have access to the democracy — that’s a beautiful thing, but we still want everyone to exert patience, ignore a lot of the noise that’s going on, allow us to complete the accounting process.”
Mail-in ballots that are post-marked by Election Day and received by 5 p.m. Friday, which are lawful in Pennsylvania, are being set aside because of a lawsuit from the Trump campaign questioning their validity. Deeley said she did not yet know how many of those ballots had been segregated, but she said the count is going as quickly as possible without sacrificing accuracy.
By law in Pennsylvania, if there's less than a .5% difference between totals for the two candidates, a recount will be held. Right now, there is a .1% difference between the two, and an eventual recount is likely.
Stay with KYW Newsradio for more on this developing story.