HARRISBURG — With six days until Election Day, Pennsylvania’s top elections official on Wednesday urged voters in the presidential battleground state who have a mail-in ballot to drop it off in person rather than mail it.
In addition to concerns over Postal Service delays, litigation in front of the U.S. Supreme Court is raising doubts over the timing of the deadline for counties to receive mail-in ballots. The state Republican Party is asking the court to reinstate a deadline of Election Day for receiving ballots, rather than Nov. 6, three days after the election. It is unclear whether or when the court will take up the case.
“At this point we are not recommending that anybody put their ballots in the mail, just drop it off in person,” Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar told reporters Wednesday. “We really recommend that you drop it off in person.”
The deadline to apply for mail-in ballots passed on Tuesday. Voters applied for almost 3.1 mail-in or absentee ballots, with about 2 million returned thus far, election officials say.
There are a variety of ways to drop off mail-in ballots, including at secure election drop boxes, county election offices and other county-designated drop-off locations.
Counties expect to need two or three days after Election Day to tabulate the vast majority of mail-in ballots, whether they are dropped off or mailed, with expectations that many mail-in votes will not be counted by the night of the election. Pennsylvania Democrats had tried to pass legislation allowing counties to process mail-in ballots before Election Day, but Republicans blocked it.
That could leave the results of many contests, including Pennsylvania’s presidential election result, in doubt for days after polls close.
Counties can start opening what could be more than 3 million mail-in ballot envelopes starting Tuesday at 7 a.m., when Election Day polls open, but they cannot start tabulating them until polls close at 8 p.m. that night.
Some counties, including Philadelphia, plan to have at least some mail-in ballots tabulated on election night.
Some counties do not plan to start tabulating mail-in ballots until Wednesday.
In Monroe County in northeastern Pennsylvania, for example, officials want to get in-person voting results taken care of and reported Tuesday before they begin working on tabulating mailed-in ballots, said Sharon Laverdure, the county commission chair. They do plan to start opening the outer envelopes holding mail-in ballots on Tuesday to get some of the laborious processing out of the way, Laverdure said.
