President Trump is on his way to another big victory in Westmoreland County.
According to unofficial results, with more than 77% of the vote counted, Trump continued to hold a commanding lead over former Vice President Joe Biden among county voters.
With all 307 precincts reporting votes cast in-person on Election Day and mail-in ballots from 220 precincts, Trump had received roughly 121,000 votes, or nearly 67% of those counted so far. His 68,000-vote lead was 10,000 more than the 58,000 total Biden had received in the county.
Trump has 5,000 more votes in Westmoreland County than he received in 2016. About 21,000 mail-in votes remained to be counted.
In Allegheny County, Biden led Trump 334,000 (56%) to 250,000 (42%) as of Wednesday afternoon, with 98% of precincts reporting.
Of the nearly 350,000 mail-in ballots received in Allegheny County, workers had counted 238,000 by 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Nearly 3.1 million Pennsylvanians requested mail-in or absentee ballots, with more than 2.5 million returned. Half of those had been counted by Wednesday morning, state officials said.
Racing to the end
The counting of mail-in ballots in Westmoreland County temporarily ended at midnight Tuesday and resumed after 9 a.m. Wednesday.
“We will count the mail-ins (Wednesday) until they are done,” Elections Bureau Director JoAnn Sebastiani said.
Counting was slow going.
According to the latest numbers, 60,167 mail-in ballots were returned to the county. Mail-in ballots are being counted alphabetically and by precinct. As of 3 p.m., more than 39,000 mail-in votes had been counted.
Sebastiani said additional mail-in ballots, postmarked Tuesday, were received Wednesday at the Westmoreland County Courthouse. The U.S. Postal Service delivered an unknown number of mail-in ballots to the courthouse after 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Those ballots will be segregated and counted separately after Friday, according to a ruling from the state’s Supreme Court. State law allows ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 to be received up to three days after the election.
County leaders continued to stress patience as the count continued.
“We’re doing the best we can,” Commissioner Gina Cerilli said.
Another unknown is the number of provisional ballots cast at polls Tuesday.
Provisional ballots are used in situations where a voter’s eligibility was in question. Voters who requested but had not received a mail-in ballot were permitted to vote by provisional ballot. The county approved more than 76,000 mail-in ballot applications, meaning there could be as many as 16,000 provisional ballots cast Tuesday.
The counting of provisional ballots will begin Friday morning.
Meanwhile, Election Day returns from one precinct — Penn Township 3-3, which was the last to arrive at the courthouse early Wednesday morning — was initially not included in the county’s posted results. Those totals were added to the county results later Wednesday.
