PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Pennsylvania officials are preparing for Tuesday’s election and emphasizing efforts to count the ballots accurately and efficiently while combatting disinformation. Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican, offered an update on what to expect.
“Counting votes itself does not take much time. It's really everything leading up to that that takes the most time,” Schmidt said.
The secretary says a lot has been done to expedite the process since the last presidential election, but state law in Pennsylvania does not allow counting to begin until the polls open at 7 a.m. on Tuesday.
“That is, of course, at the exact same time our county partners are also opening the doors to more than 9000 polling locations for 13 hours of in person voting,” Schmidt said.
Other states have changed similar laws.
Instead, Pennsylvania has issued $45 million worth of election integrity grant funding that counties have used to purchase equipment that expedites the sorting and opening process or to hire more people to participate in the process.
“Pennsylvania has never had final results on Election Night,” Schmidt said. “Ultimately, it comes down to — and has always, ever come down to — how close a race is. The closer the race, the longer it takes to know who won and who lost.”
Schmidt says election workers have more experience running the process, and a lower number of mail-in ballots requests than in previous years may help expedite the process.
He also says a new rule that counties are required to report by midnight on election night the remaining number of ballots they have to count will counter misinformation such as the 2020 lie about “found ballots.”
Still he worries about misinformation creating distrust in the process …
“A video yesterday shared widely led to false claims that a voter assistance group in Allegany County was impersonating election officials and intimidating voters,” Schmidt said
“Another video shared widely yesterday that I saw showed an acting postmaster himself bringing mail ballots to the Northampton County election office — literally just delivering the mail. That video led to false allegations of ballot harvesting.”