Pennsylvania, where Trump will campaign Tuesday, has been battered by the coronavirus.
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Pennsylvania voters requested nearly 3 million ballots and have returned just over 1 million of them.Credit...Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press
The top election officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two battleground states where many fear that an avalanche of mail ballots could significantly delay the reporting of election results next month, said Tuesday that they hope to finish counting nearly every ballot within three days of Election Day.
Secretaries of state Jocelyn Benson of Michigan and Kathy Boockvar of Pennsylvania said election officials in both of their states have made sweeping preparations to process absentee ballots quickly, even though they will have to begin their tabulations long after many other states.
Ms. Benson said Michigan had doubled or tripled the number of high-speed ballot-processing machines in counties with large numbers of absentee voters and had recruited 30,000 workers to verify and count them.
In Pennsylvania, Ms. Boockvar said, outside experts had helped state and local election officials “figure out what was most important and where we could eliminate bottlenecks” in the tabulations. Workers in more populous counties will be counting around the clock until tabulations are largely complete; a handful of ballots, like those from voters living abroad, are counted later.
“All the counties have really upped their game,” she said. “By Friday, I expect the overwhelming majority of ballots will be counted in Pennsylvania.”
The two secretaries, both Democrats, spoke with Secretary of State Frank LaRose of Ohio, a Republican, at a seminar held by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University.
Their pledges appeared aimed in part at addressing concerns that prolonged tabulations in the two states would raise public concerns about election fraud that could be exploited by losing candidates. President Trump has repeatedly said that he could lose only if the presidential election were rigged, and has claimed without evidence that voting by mail is riddled with fraud.
Pennsylvania and Michigan are perhaps the two most hotly contested states where delays in tabulating absentees votes have seemed likely to be significant. In Pennsylvania, where voters requested nearly 3 million ballots and have returned just over 1 million of them according to the United States Elections Project, workers cannot even open ballots until the polls have closed.
Michigan voters have already sent in almost 1.7 million of the nearly 3 million absentee ballots they have requested, but state law only allows election workers to begin opening and verifying mail ballots — but not tabulating them — on the day before Election Day.
Ohioans also are voting by mail in record numbers and have already returned half of the 2.4 million ballots they have requested. But the state’s tabulation rules, which allow counties to process absentee ballots as they arrive, make it likely that some absentee results will be posted even before in-person ballots are counted, Mr. LaRose said.
All three officials said they had taken steps to ensure that their vote counts were as transparent as possible to debunk claims of fraud. Ohio will revise election night reports to highlight the number of absentee ballots that remain to be counted, Mr. LaRose said. Both Pennsylvania and Michigan will give regular updates on the results of tabulating absentee ballots “to demonstrate to the public exactly what’s happening and exactly how the process is working,” Ms. Benson said.
The top election officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two battleground states where many fear that an avalanche of mail ballots could significantly delay the reporting of election results next month, said Tuesday that they hope to finish counting nearly every ballot within three days of Election Day.
Secretaries of state Jocelyn Benson of Michigan and Kathy Boockvar of Pennsylvania said election officials in both of their states have made sweeping preparations to process absentee ballots quickly, even though they will have to begin their tabulations long after many other states.
Ms. Benson said Michigan had doubled or tripled the number of high-speed ballot-processing machines in counties with large numbers of absentee voters and had recruited 30,000 workers to verify and count them.
In Pennsylvania, Ms. Boockvar said, outside experts had helped state and local election officials “figure out what was most important and where we could eliminate bottlenecks” in the tabulations. Workers in more populous counties will be counting around the clock until tabulations are largely complete; a handful of ballots, like those from voters living abroad, are counted later.
“All the counties have really upped their game,” she said. “By Friday, I expect the overwhelming majority of ballots will be counted in Pennsylvania.”
The two secretaries, both Democrats, spoke with Secretary of State Frank LaRose of Ohio, a Republican, at a seminar held by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University.
Their pledges appeared aimed in part at addressing concerns that prolonged tabulations in the two states would raise public concerns about election fraud that could be exploited by losing candidates. President Trump has repeatedly said that he could lose only if the presidential election were rigged, and has claimed without evidence that voting by mail is riddled with fraud.
Pennsylvania and Michigan are perhaps the two most hotly contested states where delays in tabulating absentees votes have seemed likely to be significant. In Pennsylvania, where voters requested nearly 3 million ballots and have returned just over 1 million of them according to the United States Elections Project, workers cannot even open ballots until the polls have closed.
Michigan voters have already sent in almost 1.7 million of the nearly 3 million absentee ballots they have requested, but state law only allows election workers to begin opening and verifying mail ballots — but not tabulating them — on the day before Election Day.
Ohioans also are voting by mail in record numbers and have already returned half of the 2.4 million ballots they have requested. But the state’s tabulation rules, which allow counties to process absentee ballots as they arrive, make it likely that some absentee results will be posted even before in-person ballots are counted, Mr. LaRose said.
All three officials said they had taken steps to ensure that their vote counts were as transparent as possible to debunk claims of fraud. Ohio will revise election night reports to highlight the number of absentee ballots that remain to be counted, Mr. LaRose said. Both Pennsylvania and Michigan will give regular updates on the results of tabulating absentee ballots “to demonstrate to the public exactly what’s happening and exactly how the process is working,” Ms. Benson said.
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