True solution remains out of reach
While election officials take steps such as hiring temp agencies to help count ballots, expanding facilities to accommodate more powerful machines, and training more people to move things along, what they say would really make counting smoother and faster is the ability to pre-canvass mail ballots.
Pre-canvassing also, many election officials believe, would help prevent the kind of distrust that flourished in 2020, when the delay in counting mail-in ballots contributed to Pennsylvania becoming a focus of the Trump campaign’s baseless claims of a rigged election.
Forced to wait to start their mail-ballot processing on Election Day, many counties, particularly larger ones like Philadelphia, weren’t able to finish counting by that night. In fact, Philadelphia’s counting took four more days. Spurred on by the Trump campaign’s allegations, protestors descended on counting centers and election boards demanding that they “Stop the Steal” and halt the counting of what they inaccurately characterized as illegitimate ballots.
In 2021, state Rep. Seth Grove, the Republican chair of the State Government Committee, proposed a bill that would give election officials five days for pre-canvassing mail-in ballots. The bill passed both chambers, but because it also included unrelated provisions, including a voter ID law, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed it.
The proposal hasn’t come up again in the legislature since, either as a standalone bill or in a new package of election legislation. Grove says Republicans won’t try again until Wolf ’s term as governor is over.
This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s collaboration with Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting. This article is available for reprint under the terms of Votebeat’s republishing policy.
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