Counting mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, one of the most important presidential battlegrounds, is among the handful of states that did not begin processing absentee ballots until Election Day morning.
That abridged timeline is one of the reasons the state isn’t expected to have every vote counted until Friday, at the earliest.
It’s the result of deadlocked negotiations between Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and Republicans who control of the state legislature.
When Pennsylvania approved so-called "no-excuse" absentee mail ballots last fall -- meaning any voter can request one without citing a reason -- the law didn’t allow officials to begin canvassing mail ballots until polls close on election night, according to Lisa Schaefer, the executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania.
Counties began lobbying lawmakers to give them more time to process ballots ahead of the pandemic. But their effort became more aggressive over the summer, after several counties struggled to quickly count the deluge of mail-in ballots in the June primary.
"We’re already trying to run a successful in-person election on Election Day," Schaefer said, summing up the argument counties made for more time to process mail-in ballots. "Trying to add processing of mail-in ballots on Election Day basically means we’re trying to run two elections at the same time."
In September, lawmakers in Harrisburg took up the issue again, with counties seeking as much as three weeks to process mail-in ballots.
Republicans passed a measure through the Pennsylvania General Assembly that included the changes sought by counties, but also would have limited the number of days counties could accept mail-in ballots after the election, and allow people to serve as poll watchers in counties adjacent to where they live.
Wolf claimed he reached an agreement with Republicans on the package. But GOP statehouse leaders denied they had any accord with the governor, and claimed he resisted changes to the rules governing poll watchers.
"I was trying to get to a point where we have a reasonable counting opportunity for the counties, Republican counties and Democratic counties, to give them a chance to do a very practical thing, which is open those envelopes up and smooth them out if they have to get them ready to be counted at 8 p.m. on Election Day,” Wolf said on Oct. 27.
The legislative stalemate kept the status quo in place – leaving many counties preparing to start processing mail-in ballots at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning.
But at least eight counties are reportedly planning to wait until Wednesday morning to start processing and counting mail in absentee ballots received before the election: Beaver, Cumberland, Franklin, Greene, Juniata, Mercer, Monroe, and Montour. In 2016, President Trump won all these counties, except for Monroe.