PA Voters Urged To Hand-Deliver Ballots Immediately

PENNSYLVANIA — Election officials and leaders in Pennsylvania are now urging residents not to place their ballots in the mail, and to instead hand-deliver their ballots to their local county's elections office or drop box.

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The announcement comes one week before Election Day and on the deadline to request a mail-in ballot in Pennsylvania.

“If you haven’t already, voters with mail ballots should immediately hand-deliver your ballot to your county-designated location,” Gov. Tom Wolf said in a statement Tuesday. “Don’t wait until Election Day. Hand-delivering your own ballot now will give you the peace of mind that your vote will be counted, and your voice will be heard in this historic election.”

Some 3.02 million voters have requested mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, according to the Department of State. About 57.48 percent of them had been returned as of Tuesday morning, meaning that more than a million ballots are still in the mail or have not yet been mailed.

Of course, polls will be open on Election Day, Nov. 3, with health precautions in place due to the coronavirus. The virus has been surging nationwide and in Pennsylvania, as 2,751 additional positive cases of COVID-19 were reported Tuesday. That's the highest single-day total of the pandemic.

People who applied for a mail-in ballot but lost the ballot or have not returned it can still cast a "provisional ballot" at the polls on Election Day. The county election board will then verify that the mail-in ballot was not counted before certifying the provisional vote.

Wolf acknowledged that the high influx of ballots could cause delays in tabulating the final results of the election.

"Counting more than 3 million mail ballots may take more time than in past elections," he said. "All of us will need to be patient as county officials work tirelessly to ensure that all votes are counted. This could take a few days, but we must have accurate results.”

Anticipating potential delays, state Democratic leaders moved months ago to get more time to count ballots. The move was protested by Republicans, but the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld a state court's ruling that ballots received up until three days after Election Day can be counted in Pennsylvania.

The state Republican Party has asked the high court to reconsider its ruling, asking the court to decide the case in an expedited fashion just one day after Justice Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in, CNN reported.

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