Pennsylvania’s top voting official has been doing media interviews to prepare voters to wait for election results.
It took four days to call the election in Pennsylvania in 2020, in large part because of the introduction of no-excuse mail-in ballots in the state. In an interview with NPR, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said that interval created an opening for people who wanted to invent doubt about the election.
“What we saw in 2020, is we saw that window of time between the polls being closed at 8 p.m. on election night and the race being called as a period of vulnerability where people were seeking to undermine confidence in the results," Schmidt said.
Most of Pennsylvania’s smaller counties, like Cameron and McKean, expect to have unofficial results soon after the polls close, according to their elections directors. But in more populous counties in central and northern Pennsylvania, the tallying may extend into the following days.
“Blair County will not have all of its mail-ins counted on election night,” said Blair County Elections Director Sarah Seymour. “So full results will not be released on election night.”
Seymour said her office does an extra check on mail-in ballots returned after the county prints its poll book a week before Election Day. That’s to make sure no one tried to vote twice. She said she expects things to move quicker than the 2020 election, but her county will still need “some time” before results are released.
At two weeks to go until the election, Seymour said Blair County had received more than 15,000 mail-in ballots. Pennsylvania is one of only a handful of states where, by law, elections officials may only begin opening mail-in ballots the morning of Election Day. And that often creates a backlog.
Centre County is home to more than 100,000 registered voters. The county’s communications coordinator, J.J. de la Cruz, said Centre County will likely release its first round of unofficial results around 10 p.m. on election night.
But these might not be definitive in the purple county. The elections office will update its results as workers continue to count ballots and as the Board of Elections considers provisional ballots and mail-in ballots with signature, date or envelope issues.
Pennsylvania counties must send their unofficial election results to the Department of State by Nov. 12, and must certify them by Nov. 25.
