For more than two tense weeks in November 2020, election workers in Philadelphia counted votes in the presidential election. The snail-paced process of opening and scanning more than 370,000 mailed ballots delayed the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results and fueled conspiracy theories used by supporters of former President Donald Trump in hopes of overturning the results.
Four years later, with the world watching, election workers across the commonwealth have gained more practice working under Pennsylvania’s still relatively modern mail-in voting system, and modern technology has been implemented to streamline the process.
However, Act 77, the state law that allowed no-excuse absentee voting for the first time in 2020, remains unchanged. Prohibits the preparation of mail-in ballots for counting before polling stations open at 7.00 on election day.
That means election workers face the prospect of processing more than 2 million mailed ballots across the state on Election Day, creating the risk that the winner of Pennsylvania’s presidential election won’t be known for several days after voting closes.
And as questions remain about when absentee ballots should be disqualified because of defects or counted despite voter errors, court challenges could drag on for weeks.
“The message is please be patient,” Commonwealth Secretary Al Schmidt told a national audience in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” earlier this month. “Our counties are working day and night to count their voters’ votes. They do it as quickly and honestly as possible.”
With 19 electoral votes counted and polls consistently showing Pennsylvania’s race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump neck and neck, the Keystone State will likely live up to its nickname again this election, deciding the outcome of the race.
Lauren Cristella, executive director of the Philadelphia-based democracy watchdog group Committee of Seventy, said the past four years have seen improvement and election officials are well prepared.
“Pennsylvanians have every reason to trust that elections will be free, fair and secure,” Cristella said.
However, there were voter problems across the state Erie County did not receive the mail-in ballots they requested, voters who had hoped to apply for mail-in ballots by request were rejected in Bucks Countyand authorities in Lancaster, Monroe and York Counties investigating suspected fraudulent voter registration applications.
Confusion over absentee ballots at the Bucks County elections office is leading to long lines of frustrated voters
Trump and supporters have cited these irregularities as evidence of voter fraud or suppression.
In his daily Thursday elections report, Schmidt said that starting in 2022, the state is providing $45 million in grants each year that counties can apply to make election administration improvements, such as purchasing equipment to speed up the processing of absentee ballots or hiring additional staff.
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, approximately 40% of Pennsylvania voters took advantage of the option to vote without going to a polling place, resulting in 2.7 million absentee ballots being cast. Schmidt said the number of absentee ballots this year is closer to 2.2 million.
“New equipment, more people, more experience and fewer votes to count,” he said
And if counties are still counting ballots at midnight on Election Day, they must report the number of ballots counted and the number remaining to be counted, Schmidt said, which helps quell false claims that were rampant in 2020 about changes in vote counts from day by day.
Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, one of three members of the Board of Elections, said the measures would allow the city to significantly speed up vote counting compared to 2020.
“It won’t take until Saturday after the election,” Bluestein said at a news conference last week. There were elections chose President Joe Biden four days after polls closed, despite the ongoing count in Philadelphia.
But legal restrictions on preparing ballots for counting — called pre- canvassing — remain a major weakness in Pennsylvania’s election system, Bluestein warned.
“The window of time in which polls close until the race is called is the largest window of opportunity for the threat of disinformation and harassment. It’s just a fact,” he said, adding that while counties have worked to expedite the process, “it is absolutely unacceptable that we are not canvassing in Pennsylvania before Election Day.”
Forty-three states, including Florida, allow election workers to begin processing ballots before Election Day, Bluestein said.
The Pennsylvania Democratic Party is suing the Erie Board of Elections over thousands of missing absentee ballots
Cristella and others said the Legislature’s failure to adopt this and other reforms represented a “complete abdication of their responsibility” to ensure public confidence in the electoral system.
Republican lawmakers who underwent a comprehensive renovation the state’s Election Code when the GOP controlled both houses in 2021, they blame former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf for vetoing the bill.
Wolf said in his veto letter that while the legislation included some improvements, such as giving counties more time to prepare ballots for counting and increasing election workers’ pay, it was “incurably riddled with unacceptable barriers to voting.”
Among many criticisms, Wolf cited House Bill 1300including voter identification requirements that have already been found unconstitutional by Pennsylvania courts, burdensome absentee voting requirements, requiring that signatures on absentee ballots match signatures on file, and eliminating the apply of ballot drop boxes.
“This bill is ultimately not intended to improve voting access or election security, but to restrict the freedom to vote,” Wolf said at the time.
Since the beginning of the current legislative session in 2023, with Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives and Republicans maintaining a majority in the Senate, progress on election administration has become increasingly entangled in partisan politics.
Some Amendment to the Electoral Code To give counties more time to send out absentee ballots, it passed the House as a standalone measure in May but will likely die in the Senate after the legislative session ends next month.
“We have asked for this bill many times,” House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D-Montgomery) told the Capital-Star, noting that county officials and voting rights advocates have asked for it. “It appears there are those who would prefer to sow doubt and sow seeds of division in the wake of a controversial election, but they have not learned the lessons from the 2020 election denial.”
Schmidt tours Philadelphia election warehouse to highlight confidence in vote counting
State Rep. Seth Grove (R-York) said Thursday that Democrats are responsible for creating weaknesses in the electoral process “and want to exploit them for political gain.”
Grove also pointed the finger at state courts, which he accused of “creating election laws days before the election,” and at Democratic-led districts, which he said were “not permitted to implement ad hoc policies in favor of their preferred candidate.”
Philip Hensley-Robin, executive director of Common Cause PA, said the protracted court battles and inconsistent practices between counties are a direct result of omissions and ambiguities in the original language of Bill 77. Stakeholders and lawmakers have tried to fix them only to see the bills derailed by amendments that were unacceptable to one club or the other.
Since the April primary election, state appellate courts have heard arguments and issued decisions in a number of cases involving mail-in ballots. The most crucial issue left unresolved is whether absentee ballots returned on time but with errors, such as missing or incorrect dates on return envelopes or voters not using secrecy envelopes, should be counted.
As of 2020, the way counties handle such ballots has been inconsistent, and while courts at every level have weighed in on the issue, none have done so convincingly.
“These issues have led to litigation because the underlying regulations do not specify that these should not be fatal defects,” Hensley-Robin said.
The state Supreme Court recently overturned a Commonwealth Court ruling that the dating requirement violated the state constitution’s guarantee of the right to vote. The Supreme Court rejected the request to reopen the case, saying that making a decision on the matter so early before the elections could mislead voters. As a result, voters in these elections must comply with the requirement to date the return envelope of their mail-in ballots.
GOP asks SCOTUS to stay Pa. Supreme Court ruling. in a case involving provisional ballots in Butler County
The issues regarding side questions regarding mail-in ballots are still pending, but election officials still have a few days before counting begins. In one case extraordinary appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, state Supreme Court stated that county clerks must allow voters who make mistakes while voting by mail to return provisional ballots and have them counted. In another, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear the GOP appeal on whether election officials must inform voters if their absentee ballots contain stern errors.
On Wednesday, a Commonwealth Court panel ruled: once againthat the Philadelphia Board of Elections violated voter rights by disqualifying undated absentee ballots in the September special election for the House of Representatives. The GOP asked the state Supreme Court on Thursday to stay or modify the lower court’s decision so that it would not affect the Nov. 5 election.
Vic Walzak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said the Commonwealth Court’s rulings generally apply statewide. Speaking last week ahead of the Commonwealth Court’s latest decision, Walczak said he could not understand the reluctance of courts and litigants to resolve the issue.
Resolving the issue before the election avoids the skepticism and distrust inherent in a court decision deciding the outcome of a close election, he said.
“It’s not a very good view of how courts make decisions when anyone can look and say, ‘We kind of know what will happen if these ballots are counted,’” Walczak said.
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