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BumRushDaShow

(127,312 posts)
Fri Sep 18, 2020, 08:42 PM Sep 2020

Elections officials will count Pennsylvania mail ballots around the clock until they're done

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

Everybody’s going to want to know who won the White House, and nobody wants to be the reason the world is waiting to find out. So elections officials in Philadelphia and its four suburban counties have an aggressive but simple new plan for reducing the time it will take to count a deluge of mail ballots: Once they start counting on Election Day, they won’t stop.

“We’re planning on running 24 hours a day,” said Bob Harvie, the Bucks County commissioner who chairs the elections board. “Once we start opening ballots, we’re going to have different shifts where we’re never going to close the doors of the Board of Elections.” That’s a significant departure from the past, when counties would process votes late into the night but eventually send everyone home, continuing to count ballots as part of lengthy work days following an election. This year, those work days won’t end.

The counting won’t stop either in Philadelphia, nor in Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties. Together, the five Southeastern Pennsylvania counties have more than one-third of Pennsylvania’s registered voters. They will have to count hundreds of thousands — perhaps more than a million — mail ballots. That takes time, and Pennsylvania law doesn’t allow officials to start counting until polls open on Nov. 3. That means it could take days to call a winner in Pennsylvania, a state increasingly expected to play a decisive role in determining who wins the presidency.

<...>

This is the first year any Pennsylvania voter can vote by mail under a law passed last year, and it’s been clear for a while that counting those ballots could lead to long waits to call races. And Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, especially after months of false attacks on the method by President Donald Trump. That means there will likely be what’s known as a “blue shift” in the days after Election Day — the Republican-leaning in-person votes are counted first, making it seem like Trump is winning handily until the disproportionately Democratic mail ballots are slowly counted.

Read more: https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/counting-pennsylvania-mail-ballots-philadelphia-suburbs-20200918.html

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Elections officials will count Pennsylvania mail ballots around the clock until they're done (Original Post) BumRushDaShow Sep 2020 OP
Good still_one Sep 2020 #1
Awesome! bluestarone Sep 2020 #2
More good news. Dark n Stormy Knight Sep 2020 #3
Keep an eye on the night shift... nt EarthFirst Sep 2020 #4
This corner of the state is dark blue BumRushDaShow Sep 2020 #5
There may be a rule that both parties must be included yellowdogintexas Sep 2020 #6
That's a given and has always been the case BumRushDaShow Sep 2020 #8
Will the Brooks Brothers Rioters operate 24/7 too? klook Sep 2020 #7
Now let's get those ballots sent out, gab13by13 Sep 2020 #9
Well I'm glad the PA state Supreme Court got the Green Party top of the ticket kicked off the ballot BumRushDaShow Sep 2020 #10
K&R BlueWavePsych Sep 2020 #11

yellowdogintexas

(22,119 posts)
6. There may be a rule that both parties must be included
Fri Sep 18, 2020, 10:27 PM
Sep 2020

Our ballot board, which prescreens the mail in ballots must be bipartisan.

However in Texas we start counting the mail in ballots as soon as we start receiving them. By Election Day, the only ones left to count are the ones delivered that day. We don't know any results of course, but we know there will not be a long wait.

Our ballots must be received by Nov 3. When the polls close, the mail in and early vote totals are released.

BumRushDaShow

(127,312 posts)
8. That's a given and has always been the case
Sat Sep 19, 2020, 04:50 AM
Sep 2020

when it comes to counting/verifying votes here and particularly when it comes to reviewing provisional ballots. Except for a few Wards in the city where there are more Republicans, Democrats outnumber them 8-1 here in the city. The surrounding counties are not as concentrated but they also have more "moderate" Republicans and Independents, so if anything, I think our biggest problem, at least here in the city, will be those damn ES&S ExpressVote machines and any scanning machine failures. The city did get a $10 million grant to buy more scanners/counting machines and many other things to help with this election (including to train and buy PPE for poll workers, add safety partitions/sneeze guards at polling sites, etc).

I am still in shock that the GOP-controlled state assembly here had actually even considered and passed this "no excuse absentee ballot" thing last year. It wasn't even on my radar that it was advancing as it (and/or some "early voting" option) was a subject that I had always brought up with my (D) State Senator whenever he held a telephone Town Hall. And the bizarre but not unexpected thing is, now that they "got the memo" from the dear leader, they suddenly want to get rid of what they passed into law, which would actually have helped all those rural red counties where people have to often travel some distance to get to a town to vote.

klook

(12,134 posts)
7. Will the Brooks Brothers Rioters operate 24/7 too?
Fri Sep 18, 2020, 10:37 PM
Sep 2020

Glad to see the Pa. elections officials are doing this. It will take a lot of work in multiple states to make this election fair.

gab13by13

(20,866 posts)
9. Now let's get those ballots sent out,
Sat Sep 19, 2020, 06:07 AM
Sep 2020

they have been delayed because Republicans are trying to get the Green party on the ballot. Wife and I are voting as soon as we get our ballots.

BumRushDaShow

(127,312 posts)
10. Well I'm glad the PA state Supreme Court got the Green Party top of the ticket kicked off the ballot
Sat Sep 19, 2020, 07:10 AM
Sep 2020

and that is for the first time after several of the past Presidential elections where they appeared. I think (hope) it will make a difference for our side. But not only that, the one thing not making any news but is also a possible game-changer is the Libertarian Party, which believe it or not, gets many times more votes here in PA than the Green Party - and those votes come out of the GOP constituency.

Gary Douglas (L) had run the past couple cycles and in 2016, got 147K votes (vs Stein's 50K votes). From what I could find, Jo Jorgensen and Spike Cohen will be on the Libertarian ticket in 2020 here in PA.

As soon as Philly prints and mails the ballots out and I get mine, it'll be completed and sent back ASAP!

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