Mail-in ballots expected to delay Pa. election results
Mike Jones/Observer-Reporter
In this file photo from last November, Lori Cain, an election technician in the Washington County elections office, processes mail-in and absentee ballots after they were delivered.
Leigh Chapman
Voters in Pennsylvania shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for the results of close races on election night two weeks from today.
It will likely take several days for the full unofficial vote totals to be released for statewide elections and many legislative races as county officials across Pennsylvania count the voluminous number of mail-in ballots that are now pouring into elections offices.
“It’s going to take a few days (to count all mail-in votes),” acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Leigh Chapman said. “That doesn’t mean anything bad is happening. It just means the election process is playing out (and) every vote is being counted.”
Chapman held a video press conference Monday afternoon to discuss challenges state and county officials will face during the Nov. 8 election. The biggest reason for the delay is the sheer number of mail-in and absentee ballots that cannot be counted until 7 a.m. on Election Day. A recently passed state law offers funds to counties to help pay for elections-related costs provided workers count “continuously” until the work is completed, which will hopefully speed up the process.
There have been 1.29 million mail-in and absentee ballots requested across Pennsylvania as of Monday, and 556,758 have been returned so far, Chapman said. That’s significantly less than the estimated 2.3 million mail-in votes tallied during the 2020 presidential election, but it’s still expected to be a significant number that will tax county workers. Act 77 of 2019 expanded the use of mail-in and absentee ballots, making the options appealing to many voters, especially at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s really hard to compare. There is no apples to apples comparison,” Chapman said. “We are expecting a large turnout, especially through mail-in ballots this year.”
How quickly the mail-in votes will be counted depends on the county.
Washington County Elections Director Melanie Ostrander has a team of 15 people who will work all day Nov. 8. She expects those workers will be able to complete the job by the time the polls close, allowing the county to release its unofficial results on election night.
“The system we have in place we’ve had since November 2020 … and I’m confident that we’ll have the vast majority of mail-in and absentee results by 8 p.m.,” Ostrander said.
Washington County had nearly 37,000 mail-in ballots to count in 2020 and was able to get it done in one day, so this year’s midterms should be a relative breeze. Her office has sent out 19,397 ballots as of Monday, and received 8,606 back.
But larger counties such as Allegheny and Philadelphia will likely count for several days because of the massive volume of mail-in ballots. Greene County also is expected to take longer despite having about a dozen workers who will be split into three shifts while working continuously until the job is done.
That county has sent out nearly 2,500 mail-in ballots as of Monday – about half the number it distributed in 2020 – but elections officials aren’t exactly sure how long the process will take. This will be the first time they begin counting on Election Day rather than starting the following day as they typically have done in the past.
“I don’t have any concerns right now,” Greene County Commissioner Mike Belding said. “We’ll have a shift going 24/7 until we’re done.”
Fayette County elections officials could not be reached for comment Monday, but they had received nearly 8,000 applications for mail-in ballots as of Oct. 7. Officials previously said they were confident the county would be able to count all such ballots on Election Day and announce the figures later that night.
The final day to request a mail-in or absentee ballot is Nov. 1, and they must be returned to a voter’s county elections office no later than 8 p.m. Nov. 8. Military and civilian overseas ballots have until Nov. 15 to arrive, and the counties are expected to send their unofficial results to the Pennsylvania Department of State that same day before state elections officials certify the final results by Nov. 28.