PA Secretary of State Announce there will be “delays” in counting midterm votes

With Pennsylvania's election just around the corner, Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Leigh Chapman informs voters that definite results will not be posted on Election Night. It can take "days" to process and count all ballots, so Pennsylvanians should expect a wait in determining who their next leader will be.

Chapman informed Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that, although some voters have already submitted their ballots, Pennsylvania law states election officials cannot canvass early ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. votes cast on election night will be calculated after polls close at 8 p.m., she declared.

"The best we can do is just manage expectations and let voters know that election officials need to do their job," Chapman claimed in her interview. "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."

As Chapman pointed out, county election officials and Gov. Tom Wolf's (D) administration support earlier pre-canvassing; however, altering the law would involve legislative approval. More than 1 million mail-in ballots have been requested to date, with roughly half returned thus far.