Negotiations between the Republican-led legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf to begin opening mail ballots in Pennsylvania before Election Day appeared to collapse Wednesday.
Gov. Wolf and legislative leaders had been negotiating as recently as Tuesday to change the election code after months of inaction. However, the General Assembly adjourned Wednesday and is not scheduled to reconvene until Nov. 10, a week after the election.
In adjourning the session, Republicans rejected the petitions from county election officials across the state. These claim that allowing them to open mail ballots before Election Day would reduce the administrative difficulties. Otherwise, the state could be counting millions of ballots for days after Nov. 3.
The collapse of the deal implies that the long process of counting mail ballots cannot begin until 7 a.m. on Election Day. This situation could leave the results unclear for days and giving space for candidates to falsely declare victory.
Wolf spokesperson Lyndsay Kensinger blamed the Republican leaders of failing to reach an agreement. “The Republican leadership of the General Assembly has failed to pass legislation to ensure that election results will be known promptly after the November 3rd presidential election,” she said.
Millions of mail ballots
Now county elections offices will face the task of quickly counting what the Pennsylvania Department of State estimates could be three million mail ballots.
House Republicans had passed a bill to the Senate that would have allowed counties three days before Election Day to count mail ballots. But it also would have also allowed partisan poll watchers to drive across the state and work in counties where they were not registered to vote.
You can read: Pennsylvania County will record mail-in ballot counting process
“The governor and the legislature spectacularly failed the voters by not coming to some sort of agreement on this issue,” Forrest Lehman, the director of elections in Lycoming County, said Wednesday night.
Counties big and small, led by Republicans and Democrats, he said, all agreed on the need to allow mail ballots to be processed before Election Day: “I feel like this was a historical moment. We really needed something from them, and they didn’t live up to the moment.”
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