Pennsylvania’s wide adoption of mail ballot has led to slower counts which is unlikely to resolve itself before election night 2024.
On October 31, 2019, then-Governor Tom Wolf signed Act 77 into law ensuring massive changes to Pennsylvania’s voting law including the wide adoption of mail ballots. A long line of lawsuits, budgetary issues, resignations, and controversies ensued culminating in a chaotic 2020 election in Pennsylvania that wasn’t finalized until 4 days after polls closed.
It’s been 5 years since the passage of Act 77 and the PA Department of State is still predicting lengthy delays for mail-in vote counting this election cycle.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt – a Republican appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and the state’s top election official – has begun to alert Pennsylvania voters that election results will not be ready on election night, and perhaps for a few nights after. Schmidt blames it on Act 77’s regulations against pre-canvassing, which is the process of readying ballots for counting before Election Day.
“Plenty of other states allow the county boards to begin that process in advance of Election Day, whether it’s three days or seven days or however long. But in Pennsylvania, counties can only begin that process at 7 a.m. on election morning.”
Pennsylvania is just one of seven states that does not allow pre-canvassing before Election Day. States like Florida, which has twice the population of PA, that allow pre-canvassing upon receipt of mail or absentee ballots can report preliminary election results the night of the election.
With more than 1.4 million Pennsylvanians requesting mail ballots in the 2022 midterm elections, the vote-by-mail trend in PA does not seem to be slowing down.
Rep. Brad Roae, R-Meadville, introduced a bill to require the department to update precinct counts online to allow voters to see how the mail vote is tallied close to real-time. While Representative Roae’s bill would not deal with the pre-canvassing issue, he argues it would add much-needed transparency back to the process.
“They took [real-time counting] that away, so the public has less access to election results; there’s less transparency and I’m trying to fix it,” said Roae in an interview.
