Jean Gary, a North Philadelphia, drops off her ballot at City Hall.
Kimberly Paynter / WHYY
‘Voters should not worry’ about ballot-status updates, says Pa. secretary of state
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Ximena Conde/WHYY
Kimberly Paynter / WHYY
Jean Gary, a North Philadelphia, drops off her ballot at City Hall.
Be patient: Results of the Nov. 3 election in Pennsylvania, and across the country, likely won’t be known for days. Here’s how WITF’s newsroom will cover election night and beyond.
(Philadelphia) — On Monday, the final day people could register to vote in Pennsylvania, more than 56,000 submitted applications, bringing online registration for 2020 past the 1 million mark. For comparison, more than 858,000 people registered online in 2016.
The total number of registered voters in the commonwealth now exceeds 9 million, a record high, according to Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.
“So we’ve had a huge increase since 2016, and it’s really impressive and heartening to see so many Pennsylvanians wanting to participate,” Boockvar told reporters on a call Wednesday. “We expect very high voter turnout.”
But the higher turnout expected for this contested election, in which Pennsylvanians’ votes are highly coveted, comes with growing pains and a plea for patience.
As of Wednesday, more than 2.8 million voters had requested mail and absentee ballots and 1.1 million ballots had already been returned.
Boockvar said her office has received emails from concerned voters who have dropped off their ballots or mailed them back but have not yet received email confirmation updating them on their status.
“As the volume of these returned ballots grows, some counties, as I’ve mentioned, are receiving thousands a day, so they’re not processed as soon as they’re received,” said Boockvar.
The good news is that as counties wrap up the effort to get mail ballots out to those who have requested them, they can shift their focus to processing them, said Boockvar.
“So voters should not worry if they do not get the status update email immediately,” she said.
WHYY is the leading public media station serving the Philadelphia region, including Delaware, South Jersey and Pennsylvania. This story originally appeared on WHYY.org.
A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.
