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Mail ballots in Pennsylvania were counted much faster in this year’s election than in 2020
By 3 a.m. Wednesday, 54 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties had counted 90% or more of their mail ballots, according to data released by the state. By roughly 5 p.m., 97% of the state’s mail ballots had been counted.
In 2020, mail ballot counting went on for several days, preventing media organizations from declaring a winner in the state until the Saturday after the election. That year, the state had roughly 700,000 mail ballots or 35% more than this year. In the years since 2020, counties have grown more experienced with handling large volumes of mail ballots, and have purchased better, faster equipment, which in combination has enabled counties to process ballots more efficiently
That combination “has a big impact,” said Al Schmidt, Secretary of the Commonwealth. “It’s still a big lift, and I think that’s something that’s not considered when people shrug off the idea of more ballot pre-canvassing.”
Counties are still not allowed to pre-canvass, or begin preparing ballots for counting, before Election Day.
Relatively small numbers of ballots, such as military and overseas votes and ballots cast provisionally in person on Election Day, are still waiting to be counted in some places.
In 2020, Philadelphia had counted approximately 300,000 mail ballots by late evening on the Thursday after the election, according to reporting at the time. But this year, the city was well ahead of that pace, having counted 165,000 ballots by midnight on Election Day.
The story was the same in other counties.
Bucks County received roughly 140,000 mail ballots, and spokesperson Jim O’Malley said that by 5 a.m. Wednesday, the county had finished the bulk of them. O’Malley said this was “the fastest we have managed to do it with that volume of mail to process.” In 2020, the county took until the Thursday afternoon after the election to process its roughly 165,000 mail ballots.
“I think the staff put in a real heroic effort to get this done accurately and efficiently,” said O’Malley.
In Chester County, election officials processed over 106,000 ballots by noon Wednesday, despite receiving a bomb threat.
Karen Barsoum, elections director for the county, said that experience, new equipment, new state funding for staff provided by a 2022 law, and cultural shifts have made processing mail ballots easier. She said Chester County now treats elections not just as the responsibility of the elections office, but as an endeavor of the entire county government. Staff from other departments often help with mail ballot processing by operating envelope opening machines or scanning ballots, and coordinating closely with other parts of county government for IT, security, and transporting election equipment.
Still, she thinks the legislature needs to allow counties more time for the task of preparing mail ballots for counting — removing them from two envelopes and flattening them before they can be put through tabulators.
“To pre-canvass and (open) 2,800 envelopes just for one precinct, all of that could be cut out” if the law allowed it, she said. “If we could cut out all these steps before Election Day it would be a whole different picture.”
Many smaller counties — and even larger ones like Allegheny — have shown it is possible to finish counting the bulk of mail ballots on Election Day without a head start, but it often takes a large amount of county resources, diverting staff and supplies from other departments.
Schmidt said this resource crunch would not be necessary if counties were allowed to begin counting early ballots prior to Election Day.
He noted that many other states, including Republican-controlled ones like Florida, allow more pre-canvassing time.
Both chambers of the state legislature have passed pre-canvassing bills at various points since 2020, most recently the House, but a deal has remained elusive.
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.
