Last Updated on November 8, 2022
Pennsylvania’s Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate, John Fetterman, claimed that Democrats will stage a “comeback” after election day totals favor Republicans. The senate hopeful pointed to mail-in and absentee ballots, which cannot be counted until election day under Pennsylvania law. Still, many have questioned the validity of lengthy delays in counting votes, pointing to other states and foreign nations that count more votes in a shorter window of time.
“Counting for ballots cast by mail and early in-person cannot begin until Election Day, thanks to the GOP-controlled legislature — an intentional move to help Republicans baselessly sow doubt about the election results when it suits them,” Fetterman wrote in a memo to “interested parties,” The Washington Post reported.
“Pennsylvania is one of only eight states that bans pre-processing of early mail-in ballots, forcing county officials to wait until 7 a.m. on Tuesday to begin opening returned ballots and scanning them into the system,” he added.
Fetterman pointed to the more than 1.4 million mail-in ballots requested in Pennsylvania, which tend to skew towards Democrats. This is especially true in the Keystone State, as Spotlight PA recently reported that more than 70% of mail-in ballots requested came from registered Democrats.
“The biggest share of absentee and mail ballot requests came from Allegheny County [which includes Pittsburgh] and Philadelphia — nearly a quarter of the total,” Spotlight PA wrote.
In Pennsylvania, mail-in and absentee votes cannot be counted until polls open on election day. “Because Pennsylvania is one of the only states that reports Election Day totals first before ballots cast by mail, and because more populated counties around Philadelphia can take longer to report, we should expect one of the most dramatic shifts in the country from initial GOP support in early results to stronger Democratic gains as more votes are processed,” Fetterman said.
Election officials from Allegheny, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties told Spotlight PA that they expect to finish counting by Wednesday, the day after the election.
Like Fetterman, corporate media outlets and Democrats have repeatedly claimed that it is normal to have delays of multiple days, even weeks, when counting ballots. “Early election night results might not indicate final tallies (and why that’s OK),” reads a headline from ABC News that was published on Monday. Reuters, the Associated Press, NBC and CBS are among other major outlets that have run similar headlines over the past week.
Leigh Chapman, who currently serves as Pennsylvania’s acting Secretary of State, also told voters to expect delays.
“The best we can do is just manage expectations and let voters know that election officials need to do their job,” Chapman told Chuck Todd of Meet The Press. “They need to ensure that they’re counting every vote, and delays in results does not mean anything bad is happening. It doesn’t mean ballots are showing up out of nowhere. It’s because of that restriction where we can’t start preprocessing or canvassing those votes until election morning.”
Polls close in Pennsylvania at 8 p.m. eastern time.
