US Presidential Election 2024: Why could the vote counting process be longer in Pennsylvania?
Election officials in Pennsylvania are urging the public to be patient with getting the presidential election results after Election Day 2024.
The Keystone State will be vital to both Trump and Harris to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the 2024 race, but election officials in the state warn that making the results of the final tally public could be delayed. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican, has expressed concerns that “that period of uncertainty is something that is exploited by bad-faith actors to undermine the confidence in the outcome.”
The key battleground state was one of several in 2020 where rampant conspiracy theories, disinformation and baseless accusations of voter fraud spread during the days-long delay in releasing the final tally. The ringleader of the effort to sow doubt in the election results that year was the then US president, Donald Trump.
US Presidential Election 2024: Why could the vote counting process be longer in Pennsylvania?
Four years ago, Pennsylvania introduced early absentee and no-excuse mail voting. While that provided more ways for residents of the state to cast their ballot, it also created a lot more work for election workers. That’s because those mail-in ballots cannot be processed in any way prior to Election Day under state law.
Each mail-in ballot comes in two envelopes. Once the ballot has been removed from them, it has to be unfolded and flattened out so that all creases are removed in order to put it through a vote counting machine. This process takes several minutes for each ballot.
Additionally, this year eligible voters in Pennsylvania can cast an “early in-person” ballot. These will be treated as absentee ballots and will thus add to the amount of work election workers will be tasked with handling.
On Sunday, Schmidt was asked by CBS’s ‘60 Minutes’ why the Keystone State hasn’t taken steps to resolve the issue that became all to apparent in 2020. “Pennsylvania’s unique in that we have a divided legislature,” he explained. “We have a Democratic House and a Republican Senate. So getting anything done related to election reform has certainly been a challenge.”
“Please be patient,” Schmidt pleaded. “Our counties are working night and day to count their voters’ votes. They’re doing so as quickly as they can, and with integrity.”